The Fool and the Tool
by ShilohPR
Summary: Bella and Edward return from Volterra just in time for English final papers. As they struggle to "cure" their relationship wounds, Bella's analysis of Juliet reveals just how far they have to go, and just how alike their stories actually are. Mostly IC.
1. Act I

_AN: So, since SayNo has come to an end, I've decided to go ahead and post another of the four fanfictions I've been working on in private, haha. I figure it's best for everyone if I only have three Twifics going at a time. And though some of my others may be more exciting, I have a soft spot for this one. It won't be all that long. It's more like a slice of life for Bella and Edward, taking place after they've returned from Volterra at the end of book 1. The M rating is for a reason, so if you don't like the sexytimes, tread with caution. It won't be too bad, but this story has it's moments.  
_

_For the record, I hate the story of Romeo and Juliet with a fiery passion. I think it is one of Shakespeare's worst plays, and that he did a much better job with the comedic form of it, A Midsummer Night's Dream. But I don't know that my feelings are relevant. The story is what it is. _

_So without further ado, and in more probably than five acts, I give you:_

_

* * *

_  
**The Fool and the Tool**

**I.i  
**

His eyes were green – no, not just green, a brilliant, vivid shade, the color of the leaves after one of the countless rainstorms that frequently assuaged Forks. His dark brow tightened in concentration as his eyes followed the path of the knife, attempting to carefully scrape the scales from the fish onto a paper towel I had set on the counter. Still the scales were shooting all across the kitchen tile, and he promised he would sweep afterwards, but I was too busy running my fingers over the strong lines of his body. He was trying to implement the lessons Charlie had given him in gutting a fish, and I was trying to teach him to cook, but it was hard to concentrate when every time I got within two feet of him his warmth drew my lips to his skin. I wrapped around him and stoop on tiptoe to tug the collar of his shirt to the side and playfully bite his collarbone, obstructing his view.

"Bella . . ." he warned, turning his face to kiss my forehead. His stubble scratched against my skin and the friction made my stomach flip. "I'm trying to cook."

"Don't cook," I ordered, my fingers slipping up beneath his shirt to trace circles on his stomach. I bit his neck a bit more roughly, then pressed my tongue to the spot. The heat was incredible. He groaned but I continued, "Really, Edward. I can think of a million and one other things we both would rather—"

"But . . . but I'm _hungry_," he whined, snaking his arm around my waist. His lips crushed against mine, his teeth grabbing hold of my bottom lip and sucking it into his mouth. I ran my nails down his abdomen and snickered at the odd sounds suddenly coming from deep in his chest.

"We'll order Chinese."

"Charlie went to the trouble of teaching me how to do this," he argued, though it took longer than it should have for him to get the words out. I could see his resolve waving as I began nibbling on his earlobe. He seemed to have forgotten what he was saying completely, and his eyes had drifted closed as his breathing grew louder.

"Well now I want to teach you to do something . . ."

"Bella!" he growled, clearly not angry though he attempted to sound it. His hands snapped to my waist as his lips clamped down on my neck, knocking the knife off the counter in the process. It landed solidly on his bare foot, and he hissed as a short but deep gouge immediately began oozing blood.

Then suddenly we were snuggled down together on the couch, pressed together under a blanket as the rain outside turned to thick snow. He didn't have a shirt on, and the muscles of his stomach twitched as I ran my fingers lightly over the sharp divets at his hips. His warm breath washed down over the top of my head and he mumbled and shifted in his sleep, his eyelashes flickering against his flushed cheeks. He was so beautiful . . . I ran my fingers down the center of his chest, feeling his heat wrap around me, wash over me, send my mind spinning inside my head . . .

Then suddenly it wasn't the soft flesh beneath my cheek, but the bumps of crumpled cotton over cold marble plains. It wasn't body heat and a musky scent wrapped around me, but a cool finger running gently along my jaw, and there were no bare feet with cuts or exposed collarbones or green eyes . . .

"Bella . . ." The voice was different. Softer, smoother, far more in control than Edward had been before, when his body had raged in frustration over the choice between two different but equally strong appetites.

"Good morning, Edward," I mumbled back, rubbing my nose in the center of his chest. It was silent and motionless except for the occasional rise and fall when he habitually inhaled. I sighed and rolled off of him onto my back so that I could look into his face on the pillow beside mine. The green was gone, and instead the familiar topaz remained, a sunflower melted and poured into the hollows of his face.

"Did you sleep well?" he asked, his eyes tracing the lines of my face intently. Staring was something I had gradually become more used to; frequently his eyes inched their way along my face as though he were committing every pore to memory.

"Yes." But the smile he gave me didn't quite reach his eyes. Faking a smile is perhaps the only thing Edward Cullen is incapable of. I sighed and tried to remember the dream as I pressed, "What did I say?" I had told him before that eavesdroppers rarely heard what they wanted to, and watching me sleep was basically the same thing. Especially since our return from Italy, since my return from my walking death and his return from the brink of his own, my dreams were torturous reminders to him of all that had gone wrong. Frequently, I awoke to find him so upset that I was beginning to wonder if perhaps I should ask him to stop coming at night . . . but the thought of trying to fall asleep without feeling him beneath my cheek and chest and fingers brought back the crippling fear. I had actually sought out Carlisle at the hospital to ask him what I could possibly do, and he had done his best to quickly teach me how to talk myself through the panic attacks. I was getting better. It was something I wished I'd been able to practice before . . . but my punitive pep talks wouldn't have helped back then.

"You said, 'Your skin is so warm,'" he was saying, and I looked back into his sad face, wondering if he had picked it from Carlisle's brain, that I still was having panic attacks. Not as frequently anymore; the more times Edward _didn't_ leave, the less my brain collapsed when he did. "And 'stop bleeding.' What were you dreaming about?"

I saw the actual question, as hard as he attempted to mask it. _Who. 'Who_ were you dreaming about?' was what he wanted to ask, even knowing the answer would be agony for him. We couldn't talk about Jacob. Little had I known that my close friendship with Jacob would be as vengeful on Edward as knowledge of my zombie-like state during his absence was.

I sighed and rolled my eyes up to the ceiling, chiding, "Don't jump to conclusions, Edward."

"About what?"

"And don't play stupid. It's offensive and you're bad at it, anyway." All right, so there were two things he was incapable of. He gave the smallest of smiles that time, then kissed me on the cheek, letting his cool nose remain pressed against my temple. I twisted once again, running my fingers through his hair as I pressed my lips to his, remaining frozen there until my lungs began to burn.

I didn't tell him about the dream, though, instead kissing his nose and then pushing myself out of bed. What would hurt him more, assuming I was dreaming about Jacob bleeding or knowing I was dreaming about how much simpler our lives would be if Edward was human?

In the beginning of our new life reunited, I had only endured nightmares about Edward leaving. Having him beside me when I fell asleep apparently made my brain feel like it could freely replay the events of the past few months in excruciating detail. For almost a full month after the Cullens moved back to Forks, I frequently shot out of bed in the middle of the night, clutching blindly in the dark to make sure his body was still stretched beside me. Once he had slipped out for only a short time, just long enough to catch a deer because he knew I wasn't ready for him to be gone for several days at a time yet. He'd come back to find me hyperventilating in bed, frantic and incoherent. It was embarrassing for me but painful for him. I'll never forget his broken face once I'd calmed back down. I might as well have shoved a glowing red firepoker straight through his chest.

Eventually those dreams gave way to a new era in sweet torture which I did my best to keep secret from him. Edward as a human. It wasn't that I had never contemplated the idea before. Sometimes when I watched him, I tried to figure out what he would have looked like or how he would have acted before his change. It was difficult, seeing as I didn't have firsthand knowledge of normal behavior for a young man in 1918. What would his mannerisms have been? Would he have been even _more_ proper and polite? Had his jaw been as defined? His brow as heavy? His hair quite that shade of warm bronze? He'd had green eyes, he told me, but what shade? My brain had decided on a shade for his old eyes, and that vibrant green gaze was beginning to haunt me every minute of the day.

* * *

**I . ii**

"I guess I'll write about that Zora Neale Hurston book," Angela shrugged at lunch, stabbing a fry into her ketchup. End-of-year English papers would be due soon, and the teacher thought she had done us a favor by saying we could write about anything we wanted about any of the books we had read during the year. I don't know why teachers always assume options are good; it just means you have to expend more effort deciding what you're actually going to write about. "What about you, Bella?"

I shrugged, "Probably _Romeo and Juliet_." Edward took my hand beneath the table; everything I said made him repentant. He squeezed my fingers, hoping to convey to me how sorry he was, and I squeezed his fingers back, hoping to convey to him that I was sick of him being sorry. I just wanted him to be happy again. I wanted the smiles to reach his eyes.

"Really?" Mike snorted, shaking his head. "God, I hate that play."

"How? Isn't it the quintessential romance story?" Alice pressed, apparently intrigued by what she saw as an abnormal answer.

"Maybe to girls. I just think it's stupid. First of all, Romeo can't even decide who he's in love with. He's all heartbroken about that first girl and then he suddenly sees Juliet and his life makes sense again? He's a total pansy. I'm sure two days after Juliet died, he probably would have seen another girl and _she_ would have been the love of his life."

Angela rolled her eyes, "You're missing the point, Mike. It was true love. That only happens once."

"It was puppy love with two psycho little kids. Juliet is just your typical teenage girl, and then Romeo clearly has some sort of emotional disorder . . ."

"How is Juliet typical?" I demanded, my fingers limp in Edward's hand. Mike's alternate view of Romeo and Juliet's tragic love story was making me nauseas. I loved that play and everything it entailed.

Surprisingly, Edward agreed with him, "I don't see how a girl feeling she should throw her entire life away over some boy is normal or healthy." I felt the weight to his words aimed directly at me. Wasn't that the argument he had been making since we'd met?

My annoyance was second to my shock, though. Perhaps for the first time in history, Mike and Edward agreed. Juliet was stupid.

To summarize this, Mike shrugged with a bitterness in his voice that made me uncomfortable, "Girls. They're stupid and dramatic and are always drawn to the bad boy, aren't they?"

"It's true," I retorted, hoping to introduce some levity as I felt my breath beginning to come quicker. I had already been uncomfortable, but thanks to Edward's comment, I now felt personally attacked. Surely I wasn't going to hyperventilate over a Romeo and Juliet conversation. "I'd rather have Johnny Depp than Prince William any day," I offered lamely.

Edward's eyes were boring holes into the table, though, ignoring me as he mumbled, "It's true. Juliet was too stubborn to listen to anyone about what was good for her and it wound up costing her everything."

"So she should have married Paris? Besides, Romeo should have taken her with him when he fled the city, and the whole thing could have been avoided," I hissed back. My harsh response caught everyone off guard; only Alice averted her eyes. I rose, yanked my trey up from the table, and fled from the cafeteria, Edward staring distantly after me. If he knew what was good for him, he would follow me.

Fortunately, by the time I slammed my locker closed, he was there, leaning against the bay behind me, his eyes downcast and apologetic. Instantly my anger dissolved, replaced by embarrassment at my own temper tantrum.

"I'm sorry," he frowned, slowly looking up at me. I sighed and leaned forward to kiss him in the center of the chest.

"Don't be," I told him, wishing for once he would listen. "I mean, now I know what I'm going to do for my paper."

"Which is?" He seemed pleased I hadn't fired back my usual 'you don't have anything to be sorry about' response and stood taller, relinking our fingers.

I nodded and grinned, "I'm going to defend Juliet."

"You can't write a defense of Juliet for your final paper."

"Well originally I was going to write a detailed comparison of Romeo and Juliet to our own story. Alice is probably the Friar, don't you think? Rosalie is the little boy who gets the message wrong. But with my luck, a copy of my paper would make it back to Volterra and—"

"Bella," he interrupted with a hiss and stern glare. He stared at me hard for a moment, then suggested cautiously, "Perhaps you should ditch and rest a bit."

"Why?"

"I don't think you're getting enough sleep."

"You know how much sleep I'm getting."

"I think your dreams are keeping you from getting any rest," he countered, and he was right. It was hard to recuperate from good but tiring days with my vampire when his mortal alter-ego was trailing kisses down my spine all night . . .

Instead of arguing, I brought his knuckles to my lips and asked with my sweetest smile, "Will you walk me to class, good sir?"

"Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye than twenty of their swords: look thou but sweet, and I am proof against their enmity," he sighed, tugging me tightly to his side.

* * *

**I . iii**

That night, I had an even stupider dream than the fish one where my graceful Edward sliced his foot open trying to make out with me. In my dream, we went to Tyler's party instead of ditching to listen to music in his room, and Edward got completely trashed and jumped off the roof into a swimming pool, then stripped off everything but his boxers and made out with me in a bedroom upstairs. I guess I hadn't been drinking at the party because then he was suddenly sleeping curled around the toilet while sunlight streamed through the windows, his clammy face pressed against the cool tile while I gathered supplies to treat his hangover.

Edward was frowning when I woke up, his fingers tracing the downward curve of my lips. Before I could even whisper good morning, he explained, "You were smiling and you told me I was stupid."

"Sounds pretty accurate to me. Why are you frowning?" I returned, stretching my arms and legs, wincing as my back popped. He didn't answer and I started to worry. It wasn't like I could control my dreams. I had no power over what I said, and while it killed me that I might possibly say something to hurt him, it certainly wasn't on purpose, and I had told him—

"You asked why my eyes weren't green anymore."

I smiled with relief, not understanding how that was a problem, and pressed, "So?"

"Bella, your eyes were open when you asked me that."

"I wasn't awake yet, though."

"But what did you mean 'again'? You've never seen me with green eyes—"

"Edward, I don't know!" I groaned, covering my face with my hands. "Why do you always try to pull meaning from my dreams?"

He stared down at his lap, his face screwing up in self-deprecating thought, and I was instantly apologetic. Here he was, lying beside me for _hours_ every night with nothing to do except listen to me mumble confusing snippets of the dreamworld I had wandered into, and I was snapping at him for trying to understand them, for trying to be there with me.

"I'm sorry—" he began, but I grabbed his hands and kissed his shoulder as I interrupted, "No, no, Edward. I'm sorry. You have every right to be curious; I just don't like how upset you get."

"They're the only glimpse I get into your mind," he continued to explain, looking at me like a sweet little boy that accidentally broke his mom's favorite vase.

I sighed and offered, "Do you want me to tell you what I dreamed about? It's really, really stupid."

"Please."

"It's . . . okay, well I dreamed we went to a party and you got really drunk and jumped off Tyler's roof into a pool."

"I . . . what? I did what?"

"Jumped off a roof into a pool."

"No, I got that," he laughed. My smile grew as I glanced up and saw that every line of worry had suddenly vanished from his face and he looked genuinely happy, just because I had quickly told him my stupid dream. "I was drunk? In the presence of a lady?"

I laughed as well and shoved at his arm, nodding, "Yeah. I wasn't too surprised by the roof jump, either."

"It's so easy that it's not even really fun."

"Well it was probably scarier because you were—" I quickly cut myself off, my mouth snapping shut. But of course he noticed it, and suddenly his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"Because I was what?"

"Drunk?"

"Bella . . ." When I didn't speak, he filled in, "Because I was human."

"Edward . . ."

"No, Bella, that's what you were dreaming, wasn't it? You were dreaming that I was . . . and that's why we went to the party and I got drunk and did something stupid . . . because I was just another teenage boy."

"I don't want just another teenage boy," I countered, already knowing the argument he would forge out of it. Edward's arguments were predictable. Any way he could undermine his own amazing qualities, he did. He glared out the window, deep in thought. I chewed my lip, watching for any change in the emotions on his face, but he remained stoic. I tapped his chin, "Hey. Hey, you. You with the topaz eyes—"

"That used to be green."

I made a face, then offered, "At least . . . now you know I wasn't dreaming about Jacob." A growl rolled around his chest just at the name, but then his frown suddenly deepened even further, which was certainly not what I had been going for. "What _now_?"

"So the other night . . . So you dream about me being human a lot."

Guh. This was exactly what I had been trying to avoid by not telling him about my dreams. Edward was incapable of understanding that my dreams were about as relevant and important as the infomercials at 2AM. They were just there for whatever bored weirdo happened to be up watching . . . or up listening.

"I don't see how that's important," I argued, but of course I knew how _he_ saw it as important. Edward Cullen, man of many flaws, chief of which was his great sin of not being human. I hated it, hated how he saw himself as some vile creature when I couldn't think of a more perfect being in existence. And I hated that he could try and use my own dreams to slander himself even more.

His face was contorted in pain not much less than when Jane had forced her way into his mind and imposed pain into his every thought. Hadn't I just done the same thing? I watched his pupils dilate and constrict, dilate and constrict, and his nostrils flare and his jaw clench. It was unbearable. I threw my arms around his neck, forcing him to lay back down, and pressed as many kisses as I could against his face before he finally shrugged me away and stood up.

"Edward!" I pouted, but he just shook his head, "I need to go change. I'll be back to pick you up in a bit."

And like that, he was gone again, and I was left alone in my empty house to try and remember Carlisle's instructions on how to slow my breathing.


	2. Act II

_AN: I don't know. I have nothing to say. _

_

* * *

_

**Chapter 2**

**II . i  
**

"What, lamb! What, ladybird!" Edward whispered over my shoulder, suddenly directly behind me. I startled and cast him a glare, but he just nodded to the open book and asked, "Working on your essay?"

"Yes."

"Why in the library?"

"Because it's a sunny day and I was hoping those windows would mean I could work in peace." My words hit a mark I hadn't been aiming for with a force I hadn't intended, and he frowned. I frowned. Edward dragging out his penitence meant more jokes I couldn't make, more subjects I couldn't broach, more apologies _I_ had to give when I inevitably said something that hurt him because he thought it was hurting me. The entire arrangement was driving me insane.

"I'll leave you to—"

I groaned and shot up, grabbing his arm, "Stop it, Edward. You know I was only joking because I know you're just going to sit here and refute everything I say about Juliet. Honestly, that's all I meant by it. You know I don't want you more than two feet away." In a blink he was pressed up against me, craning his neck to smile down against my forehead.

"Like this?" He was being juvenile but I definitely preferred that to morose.

I wasn't going to let him just tease, though, so I quickly wrapped my arms around his waist and whispered, "No, closer . . ."

"Bella . . ." he breathed into my hair and I felt my heart twist itself into my throat. I felt his arms squeeze around my shoulders and I squeezed him back harder and wished we could just have wild crazy make up sex and be okay again. He was back now. The whole ordeal was behind us. Why couldn't we just _move_ on? I was the one that should have been holding the grudge, and I wasn't. How many times was I going to have this conversation with myself?

He pulled me back to arm's length seconds before someone entered my corner of the library and promised, "If I don't make any commentary on Juliet can I study with you?"

"Well I'm almost done with my list for now, and unfortunately I only got out of English class to work on this. You can study me studying for-"

"Forever?"

"I don't think you could go forever without making any snide comments about Juliet," I pointed out, lifting my eyebrow.

He opened his mouth, hesitated, than conceded, "Ten minutes. Maybe."

"At least you're honest," I laughed, sitting and turning my attention to the open playbook and my notebook.

**Bella's notes on the behavior of Juliet by scene  
Act I, Scene III: **undesiring of marriage, argues with mother but concedes to meet Paris**  
Act I, Scene V: **meets and falls in love with Romeo, flirts, obeys when she is called for

"Selfish pig," Edward suddenly muttered, and I glanced up to see his eyes trailing the words on the page I held open.

I glared, "That wasn't even ten minutes."

"Not Juliet, Romeo."

"What? He's nothing but romantic in this scene. It's the first time he sees Juliet and he's just _smitten_ – which may just be a euphemism for bloodlust, but—"

He laughed and shook his head, but tapped the exchange between the young lovers, "Look what he says. He approaches this beautiful girl and basically forces himself upon her."

"She's smitten with him, too."

"Is she? She's too young to play coy. He turns her chastity into a joke! Look there, he says 'Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.'"

"And?"

"No, read her line, Bella."

I sighed but consented, "Then have my lips the sin that they have took. What about—"

"How selfish. He should have kept his sins to himself and not even _thought_ about tainting her purity with—"

"You are _such_ a drama queen," I retorted, rolling my eyes. "Do you realize how ridiculous you sound? Besides, he asks for his sin back."

Edward froze, then laughed and shook his head, "You are utterly absurd, Bella. That's an even worse line."

"Well, Edward, now I'm confused. Don't you like anyone? Juliet is stupid and Romeo is a tool."

"Yes."

I threw my hands up in the air, but both of us were laughing and that felt good. Overwhelmingly good.

"Besides," I prodded, poking his shin with the toe of my shoe. "What's wrong with _wanting_ someone? Romeo _wants_ Juliet. She _wants_ him. If want and love are a sin—"

"If Romeo loved her, he would have left her alone."

"He didn't know they would end up dead. They could have ended up together forever."

Edward snorted, "He had to have known. Romeo was damned from the beginning."

"And Juliet?"

He paused again before letting out a slow breath, "Damned from the moment she met him."

"Well if they were both damned, why not be damned together?" It was risky thing to say to him, and I watched him closely for his reaction. Sometimes talking to Edward, about certain subjects, was like throwing rocks at a time bomb. Eventually you'd hit as the counter reached '0'.

He sighed and pressed his face to my arm, insisting, "He could have saved her if he had tried harder . . ."

"Fate, Edward. Fate. Juliet was damned to love him the moment she was born. Sorry," I shrugged. The bell rang and I kissed the top of his hair before pulling him up, "Anon, anon! Come, let's away."

* * *

**II . ii**

Edward left to respect my curfew, at least superficially, which gave Charlie and me some good father-daughter time for him to broach, "I was thinking, Bells, maybe you would want to go out to the lake with me this weekend?"

"Uh . . . you know I don't fish, Dad."

"It might be fun. Just being out on the boat. Jake might go." I knew for a fact Jake wouldn't go if I did, and probably not even if I didn't, but I certainly wasn't going to make that argument. Explaining to Dad that werewolves didn't have time to go fishing wasn't exactly the appropriate response.

Instead I offered, "Can't. I've got a big final paper for English to work on. You know how finals are."

"Oh. Right. Well maybe Edward might like to go."

I simultaneously choked and laughed. First of all, the idea of Edward sitting in a boat with my dad and Billy was enough to make me clutch my sides in a fit of giggles. He could borrow one of Dad's fishing hats with all the little bait things all over it, and a vest with all the pockets for stuff. He'd be in the middle, of course, clutching the pole awkwardly while Dad and Billy shot the breeze and knocked back a few beers. If I didn't already think Edward suffered enough on a daily basis, it would be hysterical. If I was the cruel kind of girlfriend who asked her boyfriend to do things just to see if he would, it would be a funny thing to ask.

But the real question, and the one I asked was, "Why would you invite him? You don't like him."

"I just thought maybe—"

"I'm not letting you bore him to death. That's still considered a violent act of murder."

"Actually, under the law, it—"

"Dad."

He held his hands up, "All right. It was just an idea. I just thought I could show him the ropes. Maybe he'd like it, and you're such a good cook . . . you know, teamwork and all that."

"I still make you clean the fish before I cook them."

"I could teach him to—"

"Bad idea - I'm going to bed," I quickly interrupted, my stomach suddenly churning. "Night." I faintly heard his return as I dashed up the stairs and into the cool air of the tiled bathroom.

I hated fishing. I didn't want to learn to fish, and I didn't care if Edward wanted to fish in life or not. If fishing was an interest of his, I would support him in it. Same with golf or football or collecting spoons from tourist traps or whatever. Even now, if Edward _wanted_ to fish with Charlie, I wouldn't stop him. But he didn't, and that didn't bother me.

Just because I wasn't bothered by the absurd scene that would never be, though, didn't keep my mind from leaping back to that dream, nor to other connected scenes as I stepped under the shower head to wash the day's grime off my skin. Dad and Edward returning home from a day on the lake, both laughing with sun kissed cheeks as they proudly showed off the daily catch. Dad teaching Edward to clean the fish since I won't touch the nasty things, and then the two of them feeding me the most outlandish fisherman's tales about their day as we sat down to a dinner of their hard work. That was the most primal male thing, wasn't it? To have physically caught the food that the family is eating.

Well, if it would make Edward feel like a man, he could catch me deer and stuff once I changed. I would feign an inability to hunt –was that possible for vampires?—if it would give him some sort of masculine thrill to be the breadwinner. That was a fair equivalent, right?

I puttered around in my room until I heard Charlie turn in for the night. A few minutes later, a gentle voice rode in on the wind from the ground outside my window,

"But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Isabella is the sun."

Unable to stifle the giggle and eyeroll, I leaned against the windowsill and gazed up at the sky as Edward continued from below, "Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, who is already sick and pale with grief. It is my lady, O, it is my love! O, that she knew she were." His voice fell on the last part, but before I could frown he continued, "Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, having some business, do entreat her eyes to twinkle in their spheres till they return."

I took his silence as my cue and sighed, "Ay me!"

"She speaks! O, speak again, bright angel!"

"O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name." I paused before shifting my gaze down to him, "Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I'll no longer be a—" I jumped as he was suddenly gripping the windowsill beside me, his eyes narrowed suspiciously. I didn't care, and finished, "Human. 'Tis but thy name that is my enemy; thou art thyself though not a monster. What's vampire? It is nor hand, nor foot, nor . . . I don't know the rest," I admitted sheepishly.

I could see he was angry, but he kept it controlled in order to try and tease, "Who is this Romeo fellow and why does _he_ get your love?"

"Why? Who are you?"

"'By a name I know not how to tell thee who I am: My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself. Had I it written, I would tear the word."

"Edward," I sighed, but when he remained motionless, I wracked my brain for the next lines. I shrugged and offered, "I don't know the . . . what's next? 'If they do see thee, they will murder thee'?"

"'I have night's cloak to hide me from their sight; and but thou love me, let them find me here: My life were better ended by their hate than death prorogued, wanting of thy love."

He was still being too serious with the play now and it was tugging at my chest, so I tried to break the scene by asking, "What does prorogued mean?"

It worked, and he motioned for me to move over as he answered, "To postpone."

"Use it in a sentence?" I teased.

"Edward Cullen swore to prorogue Bella Swan's change for her own sake."

"You're being difficult tonight," I groaned, kissing his arm before throwing myself onto my bed in a dramatic pout.

He sat beside me and insisted, "I'm trying to help you with your paper. Did you read Juliet's response to what I just said? She even admits that she's too fond of him."

"And then she makes him wait to swear he loves her because she wants him to think it through. She realizes it doesn't make sense at all for the 'god of her idolatry' to love her. It's too . . ."

"Too what?" Edward pressed when I didn't continue. I was staring at the ceiling in thought, but I could feel his eyes on my face as he waited impatiently.

"Too _good_."

"So to test him she proposes marriage," Edward huffed. "Because that's a logical response when you're trying to decide whether a boy loves you or not."

I rolled my eyes and turned my face towards him, "It's proof, though, because he agreed. It's not normal for boys to _want_ to get married."

"It's not normal for girls _not_ to want to get married," he snorted right back.

"I never claimed to be normal."

He sighed, "Would that I could be normal for you."

"The rest of that scenes sounds like us," I forged ahead. I wanted to argue with what he had just said, but I _had_ argued with him, and all it ever accomplished was putting us both in bad moods.

"How so?"

"They can't stay away from each other. Romeo should leave but he can't because he wants to hear her voice, and Juliet keeps sneaking away from her nurse to see if he's still there."

"Which of course he is."

"And she tries to put up some phony pretense about not remembering why she called him back, when we all know it's just because she wanted to be near him."

"Is that why?" he asked, stretching out on his stomach beside me. I turned onto my side and propped my head on my elbow.

"He asks if he can stand there until she remembers what she forgot. She admits she won't remember ever, if it means he'll stand there forever."

He smiled, "'And I'll still stay, to have thee still forget, forgetting any other home but this.'"

"Esme won't be happy about that." He laughed at that, a true smile seizing his features and taking my breath away. I won this round. I felt the victory wrap around my shoulders and settle across my chest.

With a sigh, Edward admitted, "All right, I empathize with Romeo at that moment. Suddenly there is no life that is not Juliet."

"Who is this Juliet girl and why does _she _get your love?"

His lips were pressed to mine before I could even sense movement, melded to mine in passion as his arms wrapped around my waist and pulled me tightly against him. The intensity was almost frightening when he whispered as I finally gasped for breath, "She gets nothing of me. All that I am belongs to my Bella."

"Edward?"

"'My dear?'"

"I love you."

The smile was genuine and all-consuming, radiating from every feature of his face as he whispered into my mouth, "I love you, too."


	3. Act III

_AN: I know guys, it's been a while. If you check my profile regularly, you'll know that we discovered my stepdad has brain cancer, I started a new job which has me traveling a lot, I moved in with my boyfriend, and we got a puppy. So it's been two of the most hectic months of my life, and just as it's calming down we discover my sister-in-law has breast cancer. It's a rough year to be in my family. But I'm going to try my darndest to get back to updating. I leave for an 8-day business trip on Saturday, and then I'll be on the lookout for a new job, but that's all that's standing in my way of updating, so hopefully I'll soon be back to regular updates. _

_Thanks everyone for the well wishes and the patience!  
_

_

* * *

_**Chapter Three**

**III . i**_  
_

Edward's nose was pressed beneath my ear when I awoke. I didn't remember my dreams, but he was usually stretched out beside me, maybe with my head on his chest or his arm. Usually as relaxed and serene as he currently was _not_, his arm clamped around my middle and his legs pressed against mine so that we were as close as physically possible.

"Edward . . ." He didn't move, so I repeated, "Edward. Edward!"

"Yes Bella?" His voice was low and slow and forced. Clearly I had said something to severely upset him. This was ridiculous. I didn't even remember what I dreamed about, and here he was, clinging to me as though his life depended on it. I tried to twist and face him, but he was holding too tightly.

"Um . . . can I face you, please?"

"Sorry," he mumbled, instantly loosening his hold. I twisted and stared at the agonized face before me but he refused to make eye contact, keeping his lids down to conceal the golden gaze.

This was it. I was done with this. He wouldn't even look at me. And I was sick and tired of apologizing for something I couldn't control, and sick and tired of him apologizing for something he couldn't change, and just sick and tired of it!  
I didn't bother kissing him, just pushed myself up from the bed and trudged to the bathroom. There was no point. He had retreated into some dark place where he wouldn't be able to feel my lips on his skin. I had said and done everything – what did he expect? I brushed my teeth, gave my reflection a halfsmile of sympathy, and returned.

To my empty bedroom.

Not only empty, but the window was closed. The curtains that had been fluttering in the light breeze when I'd woken up were now still beside the hard glass which had been slid down.

I sat down right where I was, feeling the breath rush from my chest in one great gust. Legs crossed, palms on the floor, I stared at the carpet. Then the shaking set in, beginning in my wrists and traveling quickly out to my fingers and up through my arms. I felt the warmth prickle across my neck and then the chill crawl in through my toes and skip its way up my legs, through my churning stomach, and along my gasping throat before settling behind my rapidly blinking eyes.

I couldn't breathe. Nothing. My mouth was open and I was sucking in air for all I was worth but nothing was reaching my lungs. Small white lights began to explode before my eyes as the sweat broke out along my hairline and the back of my neck. My heart was jumping erratically against my ribs: now too fast, now too slow, now skipping a beat, now racing to make up for it. I felt like I needed to throw up or sit on the toilet and I couldn't hear anything except a dull roar in my ears as my brain began to turn somersaults in my skull.

Can't breathe can't breathe can't breathe.

_NO_, I tried to tell myself. _Remember, Carlisle taught you this. You _can_ breathe. You _can_ breathe. Slow . . . slow . . . trust yourself._

I tried to remember Carlisle's smooth voice, his kind smile as he had told me a list of mantras I should repeat to get myself through this.

_Trust yourself. _

_You cannot suffocate yourself._

_ You can breathe._

_ In two three four, out two three four._

_ Circle of air, circle of air._

_ If you pass out, you'll just start breathing again. _

_ It is impossible to die like this._

It didn't feel impossible. I gave a strangled grasp and leaned forward, resting my forehead on the dark carpet. I clenched my hands and tried to relax my jaw as she edges of my vision began to fade into black and my eyeballs retreated into my skull.

Finally, after what felt like months and months, I drew in a long breathe. I held it until my lungs burned for release and tears prickled at the corners of my eyes. Then slow . . . slow . . . I let it out in several short bursts, but that was better. From there it got easier. Several more minutes, and I could stand, wobbling unsteady and light-headed.

Why had he shut the damn window?

He was gone. He wasn't coming back. He shut himself out.

No. No, he wasn't gone again, he had promised.

But he promised last time too.

I ran forward and thrust open the window, half expecting him to be watching from the tree line. But he wasn't. And I would have been furious if he had been, if he'd been standing there listening to my attack and not lifted a finger to help.

Downstairs, I slipped my shoes on, grabbed my keys, and jumped into the truck. Fuck school. No, I was done with this. I couldn't deal with this anymore. My dreams were hurting Edward and, in turn, Edward was hurting me. He knew what impression he had just left me with. He knew I still had panic attacks. He knew what he had just done to me.

Yes, he did that. _That _was his fault. He _knew_ better than to leave me like that, better than to shut the window behind him, better than to slip out without any explanation. Well I wasn't waiting to see if he would be by to give me a ride to school. Let him search the whole house, the whole damn forest for me, like he'd left everyone else to do last time.

My truck lumbered along until I pulled into the parking lot of the hospital. The emergency was over, so I parked in the non-emergency lot and rushed in, my face still flushed from the morning attack and a mixture of anger and adrenaline.

The nurse at the desk remained professionally calm as she greeted, "Good morning. Can I help you?"

"Um, is Dr. Cullen here? I need to speak to him."

"I believe he's on duty. Is this an emergency?"

"I, oh . . . well, no . . . I mean, no. But I do need to speak to him. Just tell him Bella is here – he . . . he knows me." What a ridiculous thing to say. Please look down your V.I.P. list and check my name off; I'm with the band.

She turned slightly away and picked up the phone and I listened as she made the call. After a moment, she gave me a comforting smile, "All right, Bella, the message is on its way to him. If you'd like to have a seat, I'm sure he'll be by any—"

"Bella." He greeted, sliding out of the doors beside the desk, collected but quick. His face was calm but concerned and I wanted to just throw myself in his arms. "Is everything all right?"

I pressed my palm to my eyes and tried not to be embarrassed when my voice broke on, "No."

"Why don't you come with me?" I nodded and followed dumbly behind as he led me through the hospital and to his office on an upper floor. I had been in here a couple times by now and found great comfort in the dark warmth of the room, the vibrant art and the photographs of the Cullens arranged neatly on his desk. It was soothing and inviting compared to the stark sterility of the rest of the hospital.

I collapsed into a chair while he took the other instead of sitting behind the desk, and after a moment of silence I began, "I'm sorry. I just . . . well first I needed to make sure you were still here."

"Oh? Was something done to—"

"Edward left . . . Edward left me this morning in a way that . . . seemed to signify that maybe he won't be . . ." and then I just lost it. I hunched forward, clutching my stomach, and I sobbed. Edward was going to see this in Carlisle's mind later and good. I wanted him too. How could he do that?

Carlisle placed a comforting hand on my shoulder but otherwise remained quiet until I had stopped several minutes later, sniffling and looking up into his gentle smile as he offered, "I assure you, Bella, we are all still here, as is Edward. I'm sorry he left you with a bad impression. As we all well know by now," and here he looked every bit the slightly confused and impatient father, "he . . . suffers some self-imposed mental torment . . .and doesn't always make the best decisions concerning . . ."

"Well, it's . . ." He stopped and watched me expectantly. How much should I tell him? On one hand, it felt strange to just confide in Carlisle about problems between Edward and me. But on the other hand, it felt entirely natural and safe. So I explained, "I don't know if you know but . . . I speak in my sleep."

"Yes, Edward has mentioned that. He finds it quite endearing."

"Not anymore, he doesn't," I grumbled. When he waited, I continued, "Since . . . since Italy, the things I say aren't exactly . . . _comforting _to that mental torment you mentioned. At first it was all nightmarish stuff and now . . . well lately I've been having dreams about . . ." I worried my lower lip, then just confessed it, "About what our life would be like if Edward was just another human boy."

"I see."

"And you know Edward, anything he can do undermine himself."

"Yes, I know Edward."

"It's so upsetting for him . . . it's been a couple days, I guess. Maybe a week. At first he thought I was dreaming about Jacob, and then I just told him, which in hindsight was a mistake. They're always stupid. Like . . . the night before last I dreamed he got drunk and jumped off the roof into Tyler Crowley's pool." Carlisle chuckled but nodded for me to continue. "They don't _mean_ anything. I don't _want_ him to be human. I mean, for everyone's sake, it's probably best that my boyfriend is indestructible and capable of compensating for my walking disability. I _like_ him the way he is, but he won't listen to me!"

"Unfortunately, Edward's a bit . . . "

"Of a dumbass?" I clamped my hand to my mouth as soon as I said it, but again Carlisle chuckled.

"I was going to say 'stubborn,' but I suppose your word works as well."

"Apparently, whatever I dreamed about last night really bothered him. He was . . . weird when I woke up. I went to the bathroom and I came back and he was gone. He'd shut the window behind him, and that window is never closed. It's sort of . . . symbolic, I guess."

"I see. Do you have any memory of what you dreamed about?" I shook my head. "Well, Edward should know that eavesdroppers rarely hear what they want to."

"That's what I told him!" I cried, throwing my hands up into the air. I fell back in the chair and sighed, "I'm just . . . tired, Carlisle. I'm so tired. I'm tired of Edward apologizing and hating himself. I'm tired of hurting him with dreams that I can't even control. I'm tired of not getting any rest while I sleep. I'm tired of having doubts every time he makes a promise because he's broken them before, and I'm tired of waking up, afraid he's not going to be there, and not being able to relax when he's out of my sight because I'm terrified he won't come back. I'm tired of not being able to breathe and not being in control of my own body. I'm just . . . I'm so tired of things being like this. Why can't things just go back to the way they were? You're back here now, just like before. So why are things still so different?"

I leaned my elbows on my knees and cradled my head in my hands, waiting for his sage words of wisdom. Surely Carlisle would be able to say something to make it all better. He would be able to pick out the splinter that was still causing so much pain and just be able to fix me and this and us. I wanted to be cured and I wanted to sleep and I just wanted things to be good again.

After a long moment, Carlisle offered, "If I may—"

"Please."

"It sounds to me, Bella, like perhaps Edward is a bit justified in still feeling guilty. I realize he _does_ need to forgive himself and accept his actions for what they were in order to move forward. But it sounds to me like you haven't really forgiven him, either."

"I have! I just . . ." I stared shamefully at the ground. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Right? I couldn't survive that happening again. I couldn't survive him leaving me again."

"He knows that, Bella. And I can tell you that I doubt with everything in me that he will ever leave you again. And certainly the rest of us would not, either. You are a Cullen, Bella, in every way but legally at this point in time." Legally. Marriage. I shuddered. "It is perfectly understandable that you need more time to regain trust in Edward. I am not a psychologist, however . . . Edward betrayed you by leaving. It is perfectly understandable that it would take time for you two to rebuild your relationship, and you should not be so hard on yourself that there was no instant fix."

"_Is _there no instant fix?"

"No, Bella," he smiled. "Unfortunately, there is no magical pill to cure heartbreak. It takes time, and both of you must be willing to accept that. The first step here, I believe, is in forgiving yourself . . . for not having forgiven Edward yet. It's all right to protect yourself, Bella. I realize it is completely against you and Edward's individual instincts, and it is certainly something I sympathize with if the roles were reversed here, but you both must forgive yourself before you can expect the other person to forgive you."

"All right, so step one: stop beating myself up for . . ."

"For being angry, Bella. Edward left you. You're allowed to be angry. It's perfectly justified."

I laughed and shook my head. Because he was right. I didn't let myself get angry. Not at Edward, anyways. Anger . . . led to fighting, and fighting led to someone leaving and the end of things and that would lead to the end of me. No, I didn't let myself be angry at Edward. Hurt I couldn't help, but anger I could lock away.

"Okay, so, say I let myself get mad. And I tell Edward that . . . that I don't trust him. That's just going to make him _worse_. I'll yell; he'll hate himself; we'll fight; he'll leave."

"He must accept the challenge of regaining your trust, one day at a time. You both must trust each other that the anger and the hurt is not the only thing you both feel. You need to be able to trust him not to leave when you get angry with him, and he needs to be able to trust you that, once your anger is released, you'll still love him."

"Of course I'll still love him."

"That is what he perhaps can't see," Carlisle suggested. "Once you can embrace your own emotions about the situation, I believe the panic attacks will disappear."

"I had a bad one this morning," I admitted, and he nodded. Of course he could tell. I looked like crap. Oh shit, and I was still wearing my sweatpants and tank top. I hadn't even _thought_ to get dressed or noticed the morning chill, I had been so frantic. "I got myself through it, though."

"That's good, Bella. Remember, I told you, as soon as you can get your brain to realize that you _can_ breathe and you _won't_ die, it'll pass. The same applies to you and Edward's relationship."

"I know . . ." I sighed, whether that was true or not. This was why I had sought Carlisle out. But really, I did want the heartbreak cure pill. "I'm so tired of waiting. I've tried to be upbeat and happy and show Edward that I'm okay but—"

"But you aren't, Bella." And I hated him because he was right. "So in essence, you are simply lying to Edward to protect him. Which is his reasoning behind why he left before, isn't it? Perhaps it is that falsity that has him on edge. As I said, it's okay to not be okay right away."

I leaned forward and back and then somewhere in the middle as I defended, "I just don't want to hurt him."

"Is it working?"

"It . . . no. No, that plan is actually failing miserably," I laughed. "It's just wearing me out." I sighed again and shook my head, "You're right, Carlisle. You're right about everything. I knew you would be."

"You are always welcome to come speak to me, Bella. You know I'm always here for you. I just keep speaking and maybe sometimes I'll say something that will help."

I rolled my eyes at his modesty, "Please, Carlisle. I just wish you had the heartbreak curing pills. That's really why I came here."

He laughed and patted my arm, "I'm afraid those haven't been invented yet. However, you mentioned that your dreams are preventing you from resting."

"Yeah. I feel like I haven't slept in weeks."

"Have you tried taking any sort of medication? Tylenol PM or Benadryl?"

"You're suggesting I drug myself to sleep?" I teased, but he shook his head with a grin, "Only for the short term. You do need your sleep, little human daughter. If you like, I could write you a prescription for low-dose sleeping pills. A week's worth, perhaps? Just enough to help your body recoup a bit."

I hesitated but relented. I needed the sleep. It was getting to the point where I couldn't even think straight.

So I agreed, "Okay. Just nothing I'm going to get addicted to or anything. A drug addiction is the last thing I need right now."

I filled the prescription at the hospital and popped one of those things down before I even got back in my truck. Don't drive after taking – whatever. I was just going home to sleep anyways. It said not to exceed three within twenty-four hours, which meant I could take one for now to nap and two before bed tonight. School was completely out of the question.

I had half expected Edward's car to be out front, but it wasn't. What time was it? School had already started, which meant he either hadn't noticed my truck's absence from the parking lot or didn't care.

No. No panic attack. I was angry. And . . . and starting to feel sort of . . . drugged.

I called Charlie just to let him know I wasn't feeling well and had decided to stay home and sleep. He didn't argue. I had been doing so much better lately but he knew I was tired, everyone could see it, so he just told me to get some sleep and called me in sick to school. I poured myself a glass of milk, took three large gulps, and then decided it was back to bed for me.

My foot was on the first step when the pounding on the door started. I made it up two more steps before the shouts started.

"Bella. Bella, let me in. Why aren't you in school?"

_Oh, Edward. I'm so mad at you right, you don't even know._

"Bella, I know you're right there."

_Of course you know. Because you are a vampire and can smell me and hear my heartbeat. But you shouldn't be pounding on my door, you should be flying through my window and lying on my bed. Or better yet, we should both be sitting in class because you should have picked me up an hour ago._

I faced the door, crossed my arms, and yelled back, "I'm sorry. It's not wise to open the door when you're a little girl home all alone. Maybe if my _window_ was still _open_ like I _left_ it a certain _stupid dumbass vampire _could climb _through _it!"

That? Felt really good.

I turned and stomped up the stairs and by the time I had reached my bedroom, there was Edward, clinging to the windowsill outside my closed window. I crossed my arms and stared. He looked . . . I don't know. Surprised. Worried. Hurt. Confused.

I crossed the room and tried to throw the window up but he had apparently closed it really hard and had to help. I didn't wait until he had landed in the room to continue, "You! You . . . you _know_ what it does to me when you leave anyways, and then you go and just disappear like that and you close _my_ window! You have no right to go closing my window! You can't . . . you can't just decide to shut yourself out of my life because you've done that before and it was _bad_, Edward."

"I . . . Bella? What's-"

"What's wrong? Here's what's wrong, Edward. I'm angry with you. I am _mad_. Because that . . . that was completely and entirely uncalled for. I don't care how hurt you are by what I am unconsciously saying in my sleep but you don't just walk out on me—"

"You didn't kiss me!" he yelled, throwing his hands up. I halted everything, surprised by the content and strength of his response.

"What?"

"You had this . . . this dream and—"

"What did I dream?" I demanded. "I don't even know what I dreamed about. I don't remember it at all."

He snorted, "I don't know what you dreamed, Bella. Does it matter? You wake up and I'm upset and you—"

"Edward, you are _always_ upset." He let his hands fall to his sides in defeat. "No! Don't _do_ that! Don't just shut down because you're sorry. Feel something, Edward!"

He covered his face with his hands and groaned, "I _do_ feel something, Bella."

"What? Tell me what you feel."

"Frustrated! And . . . and guilty and upset and guilty and ashamed and guilty and unwanted and not good enough. You're right, I shouldn't have just disappeared this morning, but . . . " He rolled his shoulders and it was such a . . . such a human gesture that I thought for a moment that perhaps this was just another of my dreams. But it wasn't, those were real sleeping pills trying to drag me down to my bed.

"But what?"

"I just . . . no, it was a bad thing to do, and I'm sorry. I was just so . . . do you have any idea what it's like listening to your girlfriend dream about all the things you _can't_ do to her?"

"Damnit, they're dreams, Edward."

"Exactly, and they have to stay that way all because of me and what I am."

"Do I wish you and me could just go at it like rabbits right now? Yes. But shit! I also wish I was two inches taller and could fill out a C-cup and speak fluent French. And had blue eyes. And I wouldn't mind being able to play, like, the violin or something."

"What's your point, Bella?"

"You get to think whatever the hell you want in your head and no one holds you accountable for it. For all I know, you're imagining us having wild sex in our meadow right this very second." He smiled despite himself and looked to the ground. "My brain does weird things while I sleep and unfortunately, I narrate it for you. That's shitty. But I don't just dream about you or about sex or about humans and vampires. I also dream about talking lizards and underwater cities and living in a house made of pretzels. Stop drawing conclusions from my dreams that are completely and utter _bullshit_."

"I've never heard you swear this much," he pointed out with a frown, softly though, almost more to himself than to me.

I retorted, "That's because I'm pissed about this morning and that's . . . just how it's coming out!" I threw my hands in the air and stomped my foot and looked all together childish, but it felt good.

He looked cautiously up at me and insisted, "I really don't like hearing you swear."

"I really don't like being pissed because you threw a temper tantrum and then left me. Again."

"Not again, Bella, I didn't—"

"You sure made it look like it, didn't you?"

"I . . . I'm sorry, Bella. I . . . I shouldn't have left you like that. It's just so . . . I hate listening to how happy you are dreaming about things that can never be because of what I am!"

I rolled my eyes, "Get over yourself, Edward. Even if you were human, there would be things that are beyond us. Maybe I'd dream you were captain of the football team or taller or whatever. No one gets _everything_, but I sure get more than anyone else. Except right now when you're being absolutely infuriating."

"_I'm_ being infuriating? You're the one that's refusing to see my side in this! You're the one refusing to see the problems, Bella!"

"What problems, Edward? There aren't problems until you cause them by jumping to conclusions instead of just _asking_ me how I feel about things. It's not like I don't talk a lot. There's nothing wrong with asking, 'Bella, how much does it really bother you that I'm a vampire?'"

"God, I hate not being able to read your mind!" he yelled, turning away and growling at the wall.

"Why, because you think I'll lie to you in my response?"

"Yes!"

And suddenly I grinned. He spun to stare at me like I was crazy, which was understandable seeing as I was smiling after he had just called me a liar. "What?"

"Edward. We're fighting."

"Uh . . . yeah." He continued to frown.

"Don't you get it? We . . . we trust each other and we care enough about us to fight!"

"Bella, fighting isn't—"

But he was interrupted by me suddenly leaping across the room and throwing my arms around his neck. I covered every square inch of his face with kisses before burying my face in his neck. He remained motionless against me, and I could feel the confusion radiating from his skin, and I loved him for it. I was acting crazy, I knew, but I was just so relieved because Carlisle was right! This was good! Edward had trusted me enough to admit that he was hurt I hadn't kissed him, that he was upset and ashamed, and that he worried I lied about when things bothered me. He said guilty too much, and he certainly didn't have any reason to feel unwanted or not good enough . . . but I couldn't tell him that. I shouldn't tell him that, because that was how he _felt_, and I shouldn't undermine that, right? Look at me, learning how to be a woman. And the truth was that I did lie about how I felt. But not anymore.

"I . . . I don't really understand what's going on," he confessed.

I pulled back and gave him a serious look, "Edward. I'm pissed that you left this morning. It infuriates me that you didn't think twice about the fit that would send me into. You should have told me what was bothering you instead of _leaving_ me. When I saw the closed window, it made me feel a bit . . . okay, no, I'm not going to protect you. Sorry, but this is how it is. I had a panic attack, the biggest I've had in a long time."

The pain on his face hurt _me_ but he needed to know. Right? Yes, he needed to know that the things he did could still hurt me.

"Bella, I—"

"No. Don't tell me you're sorry, Edward. _Prove_ it. As in don't do that again. Stop telling me things if you're going to pull stunts like that. Don't say you're sorry for leaving if you're just going to leave again. It completely undermines your apology. If something's wrong, tell me."

"I . . ." He stopped himself, took a deep breath, then nodded. "I just don't want to sound . . ."

"To sound what?"

"Like I'm complaining or ungrateful for all—I mean, I don't deserve your forgiveness, Bella."

"Yes, Edward, you do. That's not for you to decide anyway, but you deserve so much more than I can ever give you, so stop- just stop with the woe-is-me deal."

The corners of his lips twitched as he repeated, "The woe-is-me deal? But, Bella, I just . . . so what you wanted me to do was wait for you to get back from the bathroom and say I'm sorry that I'm not human and I can't do those things but can you kiss me now? That's so demanding and unequal—"

"What's unequal about it? It's not like I don't _like_ kissing you, Edward. And you're entitled to be hurt just like I am. Do you trust me?"

He scoffed, "Of course I trust you, Bella."

"Then trust me enough to be honest with me." Ooh, I was pulling all the stops out, banking on Carlisle's advice with everything I was worth. "Trust me when I say that I will still love you when you are sad or hurt or needy or even angry. Even if I don't really understand _why _you feel that way, I'll try to understand. And I'll still love you. Okay?"

He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then pursed his lips before responding, "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Yes. But . . . can you just always kiss me when you wake up? It terrifies me when you suddenly don't."

I laughed and shook my head, but it was certainly a rule I didn't mind. I pulled his face down to mine and crushed my lips to his, sucking his bottom lip between my teeth and biting his mouth several times before finally letting him go. He kept his forehead pressed against mine, his arms wrapped tightly around my waist as he smiled against my lips.

"Much better."

"Now, if you don't mind, I don't think I'm going to be able to stay on my feet much longer. . . I thought he said these were low-dose."

"What exactly did Carlisle give you?"

I paused, curious how much he knew, and pressed gently, "You saw Carlisle?"

"You didn't show up to school and you weren't here or with Charlie, so I went to the hospital. Logical assumption, really."

"I . . . wanted some pills to help me sleep," I admitted, pulling the orange bottle out of my pocket and handing it to him. He read over the label, his brow furrowed in thought, and I wondered how much medical knowledge he really had. I knew he'd earned two medical degrees, but what did that mean in application?

"Ah. He was thinking about writing you a prescription but he wouldn't give away what it was for."

I felt a bit embarrassed and quickly explained, "I'm just not getting much rest- "

"I know. I told you that yesterday."

"Well all right, Dr. Cullen," I snorted, giving his chest a playful light slap. "But I took one already and it's kind of—"

"You took one? When?"

"Before I left the—"

"Bella!" he cried, quickly pushing me back onto the bed. "What is wrong with you? It says right here on the bottle not to drive or operate machinery—"

"I know. That's why I left the forklift back in the parking lot—oh, please. Don't give me that look, Dad. It takes half an hour to kick in anyways," I argued, but he was already tucking me under the covers, fluffing the pillow dramatically before helping me maneuver onto it, as though this whole going-to-bed thing was new to me.

"Promise me. No more driving after you take medicine." I sighed but promised, then scooted over to let him lay beside me, twisting so I was pressed securely into his side. Right where I belonged.

"Oh, wait, one more thing, Edward."

"What's that?" he asked, his voice low and gentle in an obvious attempt to lull me to sleep. As if I needed his help this time. No way was I going to need two pills tonight.

"Well actually two things. First, if you ever shut my window again without my permission, I will hunt you down and gouge out those pretty topaz eyes."

He snickered but agreed, "All right. And second?"

"Well, it's not second. It's first. Always first."

"What is it, Bella?"

"I love you." His chest deflated with his long exhale, and I could feel the grin as he pressed his lips to the top of my head.

"I love you too, Bella. First and foremost, always."

As I drifted off, I felt a familiar dreamy warmth settle into my stomach. And then I remembered the dream that had upset Edward so badly.


	4. Act IV

_AN: Those who know about my actual life know it's been crazy the past few months. My stepdad and sister-in-law are both doing really well on their chemo treatments; we find out this coming week if my mom also has breast cancer (I'm in utter denial that this is actually a possibility.) Between all sorts of things like that and focusing on another project for NaNoWriMo, I took an unplanned break from working on these stories. I hope to update more regularly now, though, so thanks much much much to those of you sticking with me.  
_

* * *

**Chapter Four**

**IV.I**

The last time I'd talked to my mom, she'd offered to buy me a vibrator in response to my hacking and sputtering at her barrage of sex-with-Edward questions. It wasn't that I never _thought _of sex with Edward. I had wanted him - you know, physically - for almost as long as I had known him. It had initially been all I thought drew me towards him, this desire for him in a real and tangible way in which I'd never really wanted anyone. When we had first starting being together, this feeling had fled with his hands in the air and its eyes open in terror because I had, foolishly or not, realized that sex could actually happen now. Having a boyfriend means a lot less stands between you and sex than when you are a klutzy, scrawny, single teenage girl with all the social grace of a baby pygmy hippo. But as we'd grown more comfortable with each other, the warm feelings had seeped back in.

And then he'd left and I went totally haywire. I flipped frantically from being nauseated by the idea of intimacy with anyone to suddenly wanting it, needing it, from anywhere and anyone. Not that I actually would have pursued it, not even with Jacob who practically oozed sexuality in a way I didn't realize teenage boys even could. Once again, I wanted it, but didn't _actually _want it.

Now Edward was back. He was groveling and pitiful and would probably give me anything I asked for. And according to my dreams, I wanted it bad.

So why did I recoil just the slightest bit when he kissed me in the morning?

If he noticed, he said nothing and just asked, "Pleasant dreams?" There was a smile on his face, a slanted mischievous that no doubt meant I had said something embarrassing. When I pressed for it, he just laughed and kissed my cheek again, encouraged me to get dressed, and was out the window with one more kiss.

Charlie had already left for the day, but half a pot of coffee waited for me, just like it had every day for the past year. Instead of dumping it down the sink like I had every day for the past six months, though, I poured myself a cup and carried it upstairs to sip on while the water heated for my shower. At the last minute I turned it into a bath and sank into the hot water clutching the mug to my neck for warmth. It would make me a little late but I already owed two Saturday school sessions before graduation anyway to make up for all my absences. The school had told Charlie that if he took me to a therapist and the therapist agreed the absences were medically necessary for my mental health, I could have gotten the absences excused, but I refused to see a therapist "because my boyfriend dumped me." It wasn't like I could explain the situation to a therapist anyway. Their advice wouldn't apply to me. Edward and I were wholly unique.

I heard music pick up in my bedroom, an orchestra piece I was at least competent enough to recognize as _The Nutcracker_. I didn't let it rush me, but closed my eyes and listened to the music, daydreaming about Edward and I dancing to one of the numbers. Except in the daydream, it was nothing like prom, where I tomboyed up my dress and barely scuffled along with him to the music. In the daydream I was wearing a big sparkly elaborate dress, my hair done up, my earlobes swinging with diamonds, and my heels gracefully clicking around the ballroom floor as everyone watched us.

"Bella?" He knocked lightly at the door. "Are you okay in there?"

I sighed and pushed myself out of the tub, "Yes, I'm getting out."

"Do you need any help?" He was joking, of course, probably making fun of me for the noises I had made during my dream. Or perhaps he wasn't even doing that; maybe he was just trying to be sweet and helpful and tender.

Whatever the motive, it made me suddenly extremely shy. I didn't want him seeing my body. Apparently I waited along enough he got really worried and, turning the knob, called my name again. I slammed against the door, insisted I was fine, and threw my clothes on. He returned to my bedroom and I found him there when I returned, his eyes closed as he listened to the music.

"I meant to take you to see this last Christmas," he said. "At Christmas there were posters for it everywhere I went. It was the first year I haven't gone in . . . decades."

"Doesn't it get boring seeing the same show _every_ year?"

He shook his head and, shutting the music off, explained, "I see it in different cities. Productions have their own quirks, their own costumes. It doesn't get old."

"Not much does with you, huh?" I teased. My over-thinking of the morning was slipping away thanks to the casual conversation. I felt everything in me relaxing. "I'll go next year, if you want."

"Who knows where we'll be next year," he muttered, pulling a sharp response from me, "What?"

Edward shook his head, "Sorry, that's not what I meant. I was just thinking . . ."

"About what?" I pressed, almost frantic.

"No, just about where we'd be. College, I mean. Where you're going to go, where I'm going to go, what I'm going to study, where we're going to live-"

For the first time, talking about the future with Edward made me uncomfortable. When he put his hand on my arm, I twitched and had the terrifying urge to throw it off. I didn't want my own Edward touching me!

He frowned, seeing it this time, but I shrugged and plastered on a smile, "How fast can you get us to school?"

* * *

**IV . II**

I strode to the front of the class. Speaking in public had surpassed dying on my list of fears, and yet for once I was almost excited about it. My paper had a good, solid idea beyond it, and I was glad to get to voice my opinion, as against the grain as it apparently was.

"So. My paper is sort of a defense response for Juliet for her behavior in _Romeo & Juliet_."

"Ooh, interesting," Mr. Berty encouraged, probably expecting me to faint from stage fright.

Instead I nodded and continued, "Apparently Juliet's actions are frequently received with skepticism, and her devotion to Romeo chalked up to a schoolgirl obsessive crush." I had rehearsed this in my head for days, and the words weren't coming out exactly right, but not bad. "For my paper, I'm analyzing Juliet's character before, during, and after her initial meeting with Romeo to find out what sort of effect this new relationship had. For instance, Juliet is blindly obedient but shows herself to be more stubborn and opinionated, more her own person, strangely enough once Romeo is in the picture. Using these, I draw out what Juliet and the play both seem to be saying about true love."

"I see, I see," Mr. Berty nodded, tapping his chin as he thought. "So at heart you're using this play to prove that teenage girls can love just as deeply and rationally as adults? Or that no one loves any more or less deeply or rationally than teenage girls - love irregardless of age?"

I hadn't expected him to start tossing these questions at me so quickly, and with my face quickly flushing, nodded, "The second one." There were some snickers in the class.

"But she was fourteen," Jessica pointed out, _not_ raising her hand first. "Are you saying it's totally cool for fourteen-year-olds to have sex?"

"I don't think the sex is at the front of the play-"

"I mean, I had a girlfriend I was pretty serious about at fifteen, but I'm a totally different person now," Mike added - which was probably a lie on both accounts. "How do Romeo and Juliet know they're actually soul mates?"

"Well, they just _know_-"

"It's a play. How do we know _what_ they know? Maybe Romeo was just horny-" another kid interjected, and at this point I was about ready to lose it. This was not going at all how I had planned. I had expected criticism for my idea, but not to be picked apart.

Edward raised his hand, and I gave an audible sigh of relief. Here was Edward, coming to my rescue like a good boyfriend, putting aside his own opinions for a moment to help rebuild my confidence to finish this presentation. Mr. Berty called on him, and Edward posed the question,

"Have you thought about comparing it to _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, or at least Juliet to Hermia or Helena?"

"What?" I stammered. This did not sound like encouragement at all. "Why would I compare them?"

"Well, the fact that Shakespeare wrote the two plays, at least we think, to be tragedy and comedy perspectives of the same thing - I think that's important to counter the tragedy of Juliet with the almost buffoonish comedy of Hermia and Helena and their own fated loves. _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ sort of rips apart _Romeo and Juliet_ and the concept of true love. Maybe it supports your argument, because they're a bit older and still making the same mistakes, or maybe it supports the idea that love is irrational, stupid, and sometimes fatal, and a mistake mostly made by the young. The older characters all seem to imply that love isn't what makes marriage work, and that you learn this as you get older-"

"Maybe," I interrupted, fuming. "Maybe Shakespeare was trying to show the behavior of these reckless teenagers - that's what most people seem to think, and they condemn them for being flighty and passionate and that- that they were stupid and that's what got them killed. If they hadn't tried to be together when the world insisted otherwise, they would have lived. But at the end of the play, Romeo and Juliet have died with bravery and love, while all the adults who have outlived them have learned something about peace and love and happiness from these two reckless kids." Edward's face was blank as he listened, which only infuriated me more. "It's considered a tragedy because Romeo and Juliet were right but the world wouldn't accept that and they died for it."

"They died because Romeo couldn't keep his adolescent passions in check and killed a guy," Edward returned.

"They died because he didn't take her with him when he fled like he should have. They didn't understand the logistics of love, perhaps, but they understood the passion, and in the end no one in the play disputes that. They were clinging to a social system that didn't support their beliefs, but where their immaturity came was in their hesitation to own up to their beliefs and flee together in the beginning. And yeah, perhaps sometimes mistakes are made as to who is and isn't a soulmate, because how _do_ you know? You just _know_, whether it's fate or fairies or just a gut feeling. Helena and Hermia both knew all along - it was the guys that were confused and needed a little helping, never the girls. And I would hardly say that the Duke's or Oberon's marriages are good examples of happiness when both of their wives have to be tricked or forced into submission. Maybe the word soulmate is stupid and shouldn't be even used - maybe saying "ill-fated lovers" is confusing - maybe . . . " but I was on to something bigger, something I didn't want to discuss in front of the class.

Fortunately, seized my moment of silence to clap, "Very good, Bella. Clearly this will be a very passionate paper that I look forward to reading. Make sure you thoroughly consider the opposing ideas, but I'm sure it will be excellent. Who's next?"

I stomped back to my seat, slouched down, and ignored every glance Edward tossed in my direction.

* * *

**IV . III**

"So you're mad at me."

"No," I said, leading the way out of the class and down the hall to our lockers. I stopped long enough to demand, "But what was that in there? You're supposed to be, you know, supporting me!"

"I want you to get a good grade-"

"No you don't. I mean, maybe you do, but that's not why you argued with me in front of the entire class. You see me every day and couldn't have made those suggestions sometime, oh, I don't know, when my paper wasn't already under attack?"

He scratched the back of his neck and shrugged, "You aren't usually up to suggestions, especially concerning this paper. This was a format where comments were welcome and-"

"Not from you."

"So I'm just supposed to sit by and let you mess up your final paper, make all sorts of mistakes in thinking-"

"Yes! You've not all-knowing, Edward, _especially _when it comes to me. You're spoiled to thinking that no one deserves any privacy from you and you think that, because I get an inherent special privacy," I pointed to my head and glared, "up here, it means you can take that individuality away from me in person. You aren't smarter than me! You don't- I don't think you know me at all!" He looked like I had slapped him, and like it had actually hurt when I'd done so. My mouth was controlling itself though and wouldn't stop until my brain had finished, "Let me make my own mistakes. Let me make my own decisions. You've had your whole life to be your own person, so let me be my own!"

He waited a moment, maybe to make sure I was done, before asking gently, "Are you breaking up with me?"

"No, I just . . . I just need to think. I need some space. Please, give me some space."

So he stood there as I walked off to my locker alone. I didn't have the heart to look over my shoulder. I felt like a beast. But I was being as honest as I knew how to be. I was thinking of myself and my own welfare and I was hoping, really hoping that was the right thing to do.

* * *

**IV . IV**

Alice popped up beside my truck as I headed out after school, and asked with her hand on the door, "When you said you needed space, did you mean from Edward or all of us?"

"I don't know," I sighed. "I guess . . . just from Edward."

"Great!" She took this as permission to hop in and, cranking the heat up as high as it would go even though the weather was beginning to warm up, pressed, "So what are you thinking about?"

"Were you listening to us or did he tell you the entire conversation?"

Alice waited until I had backed the truck up and pulled safely out on the street to reply, "He told me the entire conversation. He's very confused and concerned. I don't really blame him, but then, I don't really blame you, either."

"Well if he sent you after me for an answer, I haven't got one for you."

"An answer to what?"

"I don't know. To the thousands of questions I feel like I have to answer and I don't know the answers to any of them. Edward thinks he does, but I think he's wrong a lot of the time-"

"He is, Bella. And he does. Welcome to the world of Edward's flaws: despite what you may have previous thought, they do actually exist. Neither one of you is perfect and I think you're just realizing that."

"I wish he would realize it," I sighed, shaking my head. "I can't decide if he's being too rational or not rational enough. He seems to think he's got it all figured out, but sometimes I think people who feel that way are just complete idiots. No one can have all the answers, right?"

"Right."

"Not even century-old vampires, right?"

"Especially not century-old vampires, Bella," Alice laughed. "He's still a guy. An adolescent guy at that. He knows about as much as what if feels like to be you as Charlie does."

"Which would mean absolutely not at all."

Alice nodded, "Exactly. And like Charlie, he _was _once a teenager and wants to protect you from all the crappy things that go along with growing up. And, well, in some ways he still is. Growing up, I mean."

"What did it even mean to be a teenager back when Edward was, though?" I mused, trailing off as I pictured what little I knew about the style of dress and manners and other sparse details accumulated from movies I couldn't really remember . . . In fact, I couldn't actually think of a single movie I'd seen set in the timeperiod of Edward's adolescence. My ideas of what people wore were as vague as my understanding of how life actually worked back then. When I even though of those years, it was impossible to envision them in color.

We arrived at home and I parked behind Charlie, blocking him in since I knew he was home for the night. Alice hopped out and grabbed my arm, probably foreseeing me butt-planting on the ice and wishing to spare me the embarrassment.

"Dad, Alice is over!" I yelled as we stepped through the door. I heard a muffled "okay!" from the laundry room where he was attempting to repair the washing machine that had once washed my baby clothes. Why bother buying a new one when instead you can spend a few hours every couple years repairing the one you've got? Alice led herself up to my bedroom while I grabbed some carrots and milk, then met her upstairs. I had lost quite a bit of weight over the past year and was trying to figure out how to selectively put some of it back on - you know, just in certain areas. Mainly my hips and pre-pubescent breasts.

My mind still on the washing machine, the first question I asked once behind closed doors was, "Hey, Alice? Do you guys do laundry?"

"What?" she laughed.

"You know. I mean, you guys don't sweat, right? Do you - I mean, do you need to wash clothes at all?"

She gave me a big smile, the kind she gives when she knows she's going to embarrass you, and explained, "Well, sometimes things get spilled on us. We tend to get kind of muddy and sometimes bloody while we're hunting. Our clothes stretch out, so we wash to get their shape back. And, you know, it's important to change your underwear ever day, whether you can get a yeast infection or not-"

"Alice!" I gasped, throwing a baby carrot at her. "That's disgusting."

"You asked," she shrugged. "And anyway, I think it's important that you have all the answers we can give you so you can make the most informed decisions possible."

"You mean about whether I want to be changed or not."

"Have you changed your mind?"

I hadn't. But I also hadn't thought about it in . . . at least a few days. Right now, the _right now_ seemed so overwhelmingly screwy and the future so uncertain that I honestly had forgotten about the crucial decision I had to make - not just make, but convince others to support who were adamantly against it. It was perfectly fine for me to want to fix things with Edward before convincing him to change me, right? Because I still did want him to change me. I wasn't changing my mind. I was just slowing down to make an informed and rational decision so that no one could accuse me of being flighty or reckless, and that decision was inevitably going to be to abandon all I had ever known and become a vampire. Inevitably.

Why inevitably?

Again that dark word loomed up in the back of my mind, the word which had never bothered me until that very morning. Fate. Always before it had been warm and comfortable, the perfect reason for everything between Edward and I.

Now it felt like a cop-out.

But I didn't want to explain any of this to Alice, partly because I didn't know how and partly because I didn't want to say anything that would make things worse. Anything I said to her, after all, had a fair chance of ending up directly in Edward's mind.

Instead I stretched out on the bed beside her, chewing my carrot absent-mindedly while she just continued to watch me try and think of a new subject change. I was full of questions, though, and each question branched out into ten new ones.

I grabbed the safest one and asked, "You know what I don't understand? How did Edward go from wanting to drain me of my blood to being in love with me?"

"That's probably a good question to ask him."

I snorted and shook my head, "I don't feel comfortable asking him things like that."

"Why not?"

"He typically gives answers that are _too _sappy and serious and leave me feeling overwhelmed and confused. How do _you _think it happened?"

Alice shrugged, "Well, from what he told us, he wanted to, you know," she pretended to bite the air and I laughed. "So he fled, but couldn't stop thinking about you, partly because he wanted your blood and partly because he was curious about why he couldn't read your mind. Frustrated curiosity is a very strong motivator for boys."

"Okay, but when did that change into something _more_? I'm curious about . . . about all sorts of things, but I don't go around falling in love with the test subject."

"Well . . . I suppose he watched you like the creepy stalker he is and liked what he saw."

"But what he saw was an awkward, socially-dysfunctional adolescent girl that looks like she gets dressed in the dark every day and couldn't articulate her way out of a paper bag."

"Well that was rather articulate, Bella!" Alice teased. I rolled my eyes and gave her a playful shove which she had the grace to sway as though my force actually impacted her. "See how lovely you're growing up? You really have blossomed a lot since we first met you. Anyway, some boys like that. To each his own. Edward's not exactly every girl's cup of tea, either."

I rolled my eyes, "Every girl at school wants to date him."

"Not every girl could continue to date him," she retorted. I hesitated. That wasn't why we were together, right? Because I was the first girl in the past century that could put up with him? Or that he could put up with? I almost would have felt better if there _had_ been previous girlfriends, because it would feel less like I was all that stood between Edward and an eternity of loneliness. At least if he could have had anyone he wanted all along, it would make a little more sense that he had chosen me - not sense that he'd chosen_ me_, but that I hadn't magically changed his point of view about love or been the last-minute fill in. The first didn't make sense and the second was depressing.

"I think you're trying to make too much sense out of love, Bella," Alice suggested after several quiet minutes. "I mean, can you articulate why you love Edward?"

"Well . . . because . . . because he's good, and intelligent, and handsome. Because he loves me . . ."

"So that's how you pick out a dog," she laughed. "But Edward. Why him? Why him and not Mike or Tyler or Jacob."

Jacob. Was that ever a weighty name to throw around in conversation, especially a conversation concerning love and logic. Edward was mature and rational and safe; Jacob was young and flighty and unpredictable. But of course there was no choice to make, as I had told Jacob multiple times. There was no decision to make because it was Edward, it would always be Edward, it was meant to be Edward. It was my _fate_ to be with Edward, predestined, written in the stars, plotted out long before I was born.

But maybe "fate" wasn't a good enough answer - not just for Jacob, but for me. I used "fate" to answer all the questions I didn't have a good answer for - and I was done just accepting it. I wanted answers. I wanted something real, something I could wrap my fingers around and understand and rely upon when things got bad - something more than, "Oh, just because it will be so, because it was meant to be so in a world where I don't actually really, if I think about it, believe in divine or supernatural intervention . . ."

"Fate" just wasn't enough anymore.

* * *

**IV . V**

The phone rang later in the evening, after Alice had left. Charlie called up the stairs that it was for me, and since I didn't have a phone in my room I had to leave my paper and stumble downstairs in a study-induced daze. Not that I had been doing great on the paper. I couldn't get past the question sending me running around in circles and threatening to undermine my whole paper:

Did Romeo and Juliet truly love each other, or were they just stubborn and determined to defy their parents, even to death? Teenagers didn't want to die, though. But did teenagers even really understand death?

"Hello?"

"Hey."

I almost thought it was Jacob at first, the voice was so low and almost gravelly but no, it was Edward. He sounded sick.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes. No. I don't know - I'm going crazy here. I guessed you didn't want me coming over earlier, but do you still want me to come over tonight? Alice wouldn't tell me anything so I don't know if you're really angry at me or what I can do to apologize."

I wanted him to tell me he just needed to be near me. Or that it was fine if he didn't see me tonight but he wanted to check in and just tell me that he loves me and he hoped I enjoyed my evening of girl time and then studying. Maybe he missed me but he understood that I might want some time to myself and that was fine because he knew we would see each other again soon.

I wanted him to read my mind and tell me these things, but of course he couldn't, and I couldn't hold that against him. As easy as that would have been.

So instead I asked, "How was your day?"

"What?"

"I- I asked how your day was."

"Terrible. I don't know what's going on in that head of yours and I've never wanted to be able to read someone's mind so badly."

"Well, what did you do after school?"

"I . . . what did you expect me to do? I sat in my room and thought of every possible bad outcome."

I laughed and shook my head, "Edward. Stop that. Just relax, okay? You're so much sometimes."

"Too much?"

"Just relax. I think you need some new hobbies. Like . . . scrapbooking. Or basket weaving. You could join a bowling league."

"All things to give you more time away from me?" he sighed.

So I sighed in response and asked, "Do you ever wish we could start over?"

"What? Start over how?"

"Like . . . sorry, this isn't a good conversation for the phone." In reality, it wasn't a good discussion to have with Charlie probably listening in from the next room over.

"I could come over-"

"No. Maybe . . . not tonight, okay?" I could practically see the horror on his face. I knew what I was saying. I knew it meant I would get _no _sleep and might have a panic attack and would probably have terrible dreams. "Don't freak out, okay?"

"Okay . . . "

"No, I meant about not seeing me tonight. There's nothing else. Except . . . would you like to watch a movie with me tomorrow?"

"Of course. You don't have to ask. We can do anything you want." It was almost pitiful how quick he was to agree to anything. It didn't make me feel powerful; it made me feel dirty and ashamed. He couldn't crumble just because I was being stronger now.

"No, Edward. I mean, I am asking you for a dinner and movie date. I would like to watch a movie that takes place in the early twentieth century."

He hesitated, then pressed in a much calmer voice, possibly even with a smile, "Any particular reason?"

"I'm trying to acquaint myself better with the era," I answered. "If this date sounds good, perhaps you could think of our next date? Maybe something we could go out and _do_ together?" I felt like I was rehearsing with a friend how to ask a girl out. The idea of me as a relationship coach was laughable, at best.

"I'm sure I can think of something," he quickly assured me. "So I . . . I guess I'll see you tomorrow? At school, or . . ."

"I'll see you at school, Edward."

He sighed, but at least didn't sound like he was still totally freaking out, and ended, "Good night, Bella. I love you."

"You, too," I returned, suddenly embarrassed. I hung up quickly to cover it up, but I knew my response wasn't good enough for him.

* * *

**IV . VI**

That night, I didn't dream about Edward. I dreamed about growing old with Jacob.


	5. Act V

_AN: All cancer surgeries for my family are concluded, only my stepdad remains on chemo. After losing my job, I found a new one and start that on Monday. The weather is getting a little better. I'm hoping this means I will be able to rise from the depths of depression and begin writing again. Did I mention my new job is as a creative writer? Hurray!_

_Also, to the few reviewers who are horrified that Bella told Edward not to come over . . . I truly, sincerely hope you don't think Edward and Bella's co-dependency is a healthy relationship. That's what I'm trying to do here, is break the out of that and usher them into a happy, fulfilling relationship. Bash me if you want; I would never wish a Romeo and Juliet story on anyone._

**

* * *

Chapter Five**

**V . i**

I was normal - I mean, at least _I _thought so - at school the next day. Edward was walking on eggshells, enough that Jessica asked me if we were breaking up, and she's about as observant as a bag of rocks. Edward carried my books, opened doors for me, threw my lunch tray away, and politely inquired as to how my paper was going without offering his opinions on anything.

I don't know when I'd ever been so frustrated with him. His penitence . . . well, it offended me. It angered me. I wanted everything to just be normal and happy, but then things had never really been normal, and I couldn't remember the last time things had been happy.

"You'll be crawling uphill through the mud," Carlisle had recently told me when I'd called him again to celebrate successfully talking myself through a panic attack. He'd asked how things were with Edward, I'd said "frustrating as ever," and he'd promised me that things tend to get hardest just before they get good.

Obviously, in hindsight, that sounds like a terrible innuendo, but fortunately that hadn't occurred to me until later. I'd realized it alone in my room - and was actually more surprised at how funny I found it than anything. Crude humor had never really done it for me, really. "That's what she said" jokes rarely showed any creative thinking and half the time they didn't even make sense. But this accidental innuendo from one of the least innuendo-y people I'd ever met had my rolling on my bed laughing.

And I didn't know anyone I could share that with except Jacob. Would Alice think it was funny? Edward most certainly wouldn't. But sometimes maybe I didn't want to think seriously about anything, or carry on a meaningful discussion, or be all socially awkward. Sometimes I wanted to just collapse because someone accidentally made a boner joke.

So I'd called Jacob. He hadn't answered, of course, so I just left a message on his voicemail saying, "Hey Jake. So, someone accidentally made a joke today, and I can't stop laughing about it. You're the only person I could think of that would laugh with me. So . . .give me a call back. It probably won't be as funny when I tell it, though, fair warning."

The answering machine light was blinking when Edward and I walked through the door. Of course I didn't check it, on the off chance that it was Jacob. That's just what Edward's nerves needed, a painful reminder that when he hadn't been there for me, someone else had been. And, to be fair, it had been a much less dramatic relationship. Whether it was what I _wanted_ was the question - a question I wasn't asking myself openly, but secretly, refusing to accept "fate" as the explanation any longer.

"What are we watching? Should I make popcorn?" Edward asked, already opening the pantry door.

He said it so casually, pulled out the box so _normally_, that I couldn't help but freeze. It felt like another one of my dreams: Edward making the popcorn, getting ready for a movie together. We'd eat the snack and then intertwine our buttery fingers beneath the itchy blanket.

"Bella?"

"Sorry!" I snapped out of it, shaking my head, then nodding for the popcorn. He continued to stare for a second but must have decided better than to ask me what was going on. He was probably afraid of the answer. Instead he popped the popcorn, staring intently into the microwave while I poured some juice and stomped around the kitchen, cabinets slamming painfully loudly in the otherwise quiet house.

"So what are we watching?" he asked again suddenly at the same instant he opened the microwave door and ripped the bag open. It was a lot of sudden noise and I, overwhelmed, spilled juice on the counter. And laughed at myself, which made him smile to himself as he dumped the popcorn into a bowl. I was glad he smiled; it made me feel a little more casual.

I stepped closer and sighed, "Well, you aren't going to like it."

"Why? What movie is it?"

"It's the only movie I could find at Blockbuster that took place in the desired time period."

"Is it _A Little Princess_?"

"It's _A Little Princess_," I confirmed, making a face that made him laugh again. This was good.

He shook his head but put his hand on my shoulder and assured me, "That's fine. I don't mind watching it with you."

"You can tell my how accurate everything is."

"Maybe," he shrugged. "I don't remember everything. And I never went to India or New York City. Until I was with Carlisle, I'd never left Chicago. Not that I didn't want to, but with the war, I think I figured I'd get drafted soon and wanted to spend as long with my parents as I could."

"Wow."

"What?"

"Just . . . you could have been drafted in World War One," I repeated. "That's just . . . weird. I mean . . . how different would the world be if you had-"

He gave me a crooked grin and, his hand on my back, ushered me toward the living room while insisting, "The world wouldn't be any different, Bella. You have to be a much bigger person than I to affect that."

"You mean now? Or then?" He gave me a curious look, like he hadn't understood the question. I settled on the couch while he took the movie; I waited until his back was to me to embellish on the question I'd had long ago but always been afraid to ask, for fear of offending. "I mean, do you mean you wouldn't have made a difference if you'd fought in the war? Or that you can't make a difference as you are now?"

"Of course I can make a difference now," he retorted, joining me on the couch. "Not necessarily a good one."

"Why would you say that?"

"Are you not talking about interference?" I had been, but I'd tried to mask it in the emotional 'it would make a difference to me!' I shrugged, hoping my noncommittal answer was good enough. He didn't say anything for a full minute, clearly weighing his words as he spread the blanket over both of us. When he did speak, it was staring at his lap. "There are of course lots of times when we want to interfere." He gave me a small smile at this, "You humans are all terrible at handling yourselves."

"Thanks!"

"On a whole," he laughed, but then the laugh died away. "Humans think of the most destructive things to do to each other. That's not to say our world doesn't have its . . . its wars and darkness, but the magnitude is just so different. We have nothing that compares to . . ."

"The Holocaust," I supplied.

"Yes, definitely that one. The Rwandan genocide, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, even . . . I mean, even the Oklahoma City Bombing! And it's not that many of us don't want to step in - I mean, those who are like us and actually care about the humans. It's not that we don't want to step in and just make everything better, but we can't."

I was already envisioning a world in which the Holocaust hadn't happened and pressed, "Why not?"

"Because this world belongs to you humans. No matter what the Volturi think, or any other coven for that matter, this world belongs to the humans. We can't step in and control everything, no more than you should step in and keep the hawks from eating rabbits, no matter how unjust it seems if you've ever had a pet rabbit."

"I'm your pet rabbit," I mused, which made him smile - I'm not sure he had thought of the relation until I pointed it out.

"Yes, I suppose you are. But even before I met you, our family as a whole cares very much. It's hard. It's something you have to not think of, of how different the world would be if . . . I mean, use the Holocaust as an example. What if we'd gone in and killed all the guards at Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor. Then, okay, so you have thousands of people with no food, no place to go, still hunted by all the peoples of several countries, still caught up in a war-"

"So it's better for them to die as they did? That doesn't sound right-"

"It's not _right_," he interrupted in turn. "But there aren't easy fixes. Maybe if the whole vampire community mobilized, wiped out the entire population of the enemy - first, how far does that stretch? Are the people signing the transporation cards the enemy? What about the children in the Hitler youth who have thoroughly bought into the ideals? What about the Poles and Ukraines who are running the camps in exchange for their own lives - is that evil? But say you get past that, then you still have millions of people with no food or homes or jobs. We would have had to go in and completely restructure Europe, and then most likely the world because would Britain and the US and Japan really have just sat back while our kind took over the entire mainland Europe?"

Edward had thought of details that had never occurred to me. All that my brain had ever been able to think of was _If they can't be killed, why not free the concentration camps?_ I hadn't gone past that into all these details which, once pointed out, made sense, as tragic and horrible as it might be.

"So where were you guys instead?"

"Does what I said make sense?"

I nodded, "Of course it does. I hadn't thought of what would happen next, just that-"

"Just that there are wrongs in the world that need to be righted and, if you have the strength and immortality, why not right them? We all wish it were that simple. But then, pretty much every instance leads to our kind taking control to dictate to humans how to live, and that pretty much leads to a world-wide totalitarian government where, don't forget, the subjects are also the food. It's no good any way you look at it."

"But you didn't answer my question. Where were you guys during the war?"

"South America mostly. We couldn't risk getting drafted, so we stayed mostly down there and tried to avoid all news of the war. It's hard to dodge a world war, though. It was a very dark time for our family. Carlisle wanted to go to Europe to help the wounded; Emmett wanted to fight; Esme and Rosalie just wanted everyone to stay together, safe, and uninvolved."

"When did Alice and Jasper join you?"

"Not until 1950, after the war was over. I don't actually know what they were doing during it - you'll have to ask them. They weren't together yet, though, I don't think, so it's probably not a very happy story." I was silent, trying to imagine the Cullens realistically in the context of events relegated to dry history books and inaccurate historical period movies.

"What was your favorite time period clothing-wise?" I asked, suddenly needing something lighter.

My question seemed to catch him off-guard, but he managed to smile and ask, "For me, or for you?"

"Both, I guess."

"My own for me," he admitted. "And for you, too, I think. It would be . . . ah . . . interesting," he laughed, "but good to see you in period appropriate clothing."

"It would be a lot of lace and chiffon, wouldn't it?"

"Do you even know what chiffon is?" he teased. When I shook my head, he laughed louder but admitted he didn't really, either.

"So . . . me wearing a dress from like 1917 . . . would that be like _lingerie_ to you? Or, you know, like a fetish outfit?"

A trio of emotions flitted rapidly over the typically stoic face of Edward: first shock, then uncertainty maybe, followed by downright amusement.

He laughed and insisted, "I wouldn't say it's a _fetish_. More like . . . just an interest. And really, if you're interested in the clothing, _Titanic_ is a better example. Their costumes are actually spot on - except you know, I was a kid in 1912. I remember thinking my mom was the most glamorous woman in the world . . ." Trying to imagine a child Edward was even more taxing on my already-overworked brain. It was difficult enough imagining him as the same throughout the past eighty-something years, but then to imagine him as actually younger and, hell, _alive_ when the Titanic sank . . . I was developing a headache.

Still, I sighed, "I didn't even _think_ of Titanic. We actually have that, on VHS. Should we watch that instead?"

"Tell you what, Bella. I love you just enough that I will watch _A Little Princess _and _Titanic _with you, _both _of them."

"Just enough for those two, huh?"

"Yep. Don't push your luck, Pretty Bird."

"Pretty Bird?" I repeated, laughing and repeating it several times in a parrot-like imitation, "Pretty bird, Pretty bird."

He seemed to get a bit flustered as he explained, "Well, it's what your name is! Bella Swan, pretty bird. I'm just . . . well, I mean, it occurred to me I don't have a nickname for you that's just _mine_ and so I thought I'd try some things out . . ." This was more a confession then I could usually get out of Edward concerning his motives. He looked away, his jaw set firm with embarrassment, but I laughed anyway and kissed his cheek.

"So not pretty bird," he mumbled, hitting play and pointing to the TV. "Watch the stupid movie, please."

I loved him so much right then it hurt.

* * *

**V . ii**

I fell asleep towards the end of _Titanic_ - it was a good movie, but parodies had destroyed the beauty of the end anyway, so I didn't regret missing anything. Instead, I regretted when movement woke me up and I realized I was being carried carefully up the stairs.

As soon as my eyes opened, a low voice apologized, "Sorry. I was trying to be gentle to-"

"I should clean everything up-"

"Already did," Edward assured me. He maneuvered me through my bedroom door and nudged it closed with his foot before laying me gently on my bed. He sat down beside me and watched me as I took the several minutes needed for my eyes to adjust and my brain to return to functioning. When I finally set up and rubbed at my face, he asked, "Do you want me to leave again? Or do I get to stay tonight?"

"Please don't phrase it like that."

"Sorry?"

I gave him a pointed look and pushed myself of my bed to dig through my drawers for some shorts to wear to bed. I knew he was watching everything and, in a moment of impulsiveness, I tugged my pants off without warning. Unfortunately, he was too quick for me, and when I turned around to see what he'd thought, his eyes were squeezed shut and probably had been the whole time.

I sighed.

He knew why I was sighing and insisted, "It's for the best, Bella."

"Why? You can open your eyes." He barely squinted one open, clearly not trusting me, which made me laugh.

"I'm being respectful."

"Don't I get to decide what's respectful of my own body?"

"Not until you're eighteen, according to the law," he countered, which led me to, "So at eighteen-"

"No, Bella."

"Not ever."

"I didn't say that."

"You did in so many words. If you won't have sex with me until I'm a vampire, but won't let me become a vampire, that means never. If you're not physically attracted to me-"

He interrupted, scoffing, "You know that's not it. And before you start thinking it, none of our problems would go away if we started having sex."

"I definitely don't think that."

Edward was silent in response as I wandered aimlessly around my own room, trying to look like I had things to do. I left him alone while I went to brush my teeth and came back to find him standing by the window, looking out. I got into bed and pulled the covers up and clicked off the light, not sure what his plan was. Charlie would be home soon, though, and as it was now past my curfew, Edward needed to either leave or hide - and in this instance, I wanted him to leave.

"I don't try and pressure you into anything," he finally said.

"That's because you would rather I never did anything."

"That's not true."

"Sure it is," I argued, sitting up again but not turning the light back on. "And it's also not true you don't. You lecture my constantly."

"I don't lecture, and even if I did, they're things that are good for you."

"Why don't I get to decide?" I retorted, angrily sitting back up.

"Because you don't know what's good for you!"

I pushed myself out of bed, stomped over to him, and demanded, "Then why are you still here? Huh? That's what you thought was so good for me, right? How did that work out?"

"Bella-"

"Don't! You don't always know what's good for me, Edward. And I think you know that. So fine, forget I said anything, we don't have to have sex. Ever. I'm sure there are other outlets for that sort of thing. But if it keeps feeling like you're trying to be my father instead of my boyfriend, then I'm out. I can't take it anymore, Edward."

"So-"

"Oh my god, I'm not breaking up with you! I'm . . . I'm just warning you that I'm about at my breaking point with you treating me like I'm _your_ teenage daughter. I'm not! I've got a dad, thanks. So, goodnight, thanks for watching the movies with me, and I'll see you tomorrow. Unless you think you're a bad influence and ground me from you."

"That was juvenile," he retorted, and was gone down the stairs. I didn't follow; he moved too quickly anyway. Almost as soon as his sentence was finished, I heard the downstairs front door slam and his car start.

With an angry huff, I curled into bed and yanked the covers up.

That night I learned that it is really difficult to get a good night's sleep when you're angry.


	6. Act VI

**VI . i**

By morning, all the anger had fizzled out. I was a bit cranky from a crappy night's sleep, but I was ready to see Edward again and put the argument behind us - so long as he took what I had said to heart.

I think part of me expected him to not show up. I was ready to go early and sat on the front porch, my hands shoved into my pockets for warmth as I looked continuously up the road for the first signs of his Volvo. As our agreed upon time crept closer, I became more and more nervous. When 2:00 rolled around and there was still no sign of him, I about burst into tears.

But then there was the Volvo jerking to a stop on the curb, and out leapt Edward, normal as could be.

I had to really fight not to run and jump into his arms. This being firm thing was so much harder than I had thought. My gut wanted to grovel at his feet if it meant he wouldn't be late again, if he'd forgive me and things would be okay. But that wouldn't make things better, if I just turned myself into an emotional doormat. That's what Carlisle insisted, what Alice agreed with, what even Mom had answered when I'd vaguely posed relationship questions to her.

Instead, I stood up on the porch and tried to convey many things at once as I crossed my arms but forced a smile and called, "You're late!" He jogged up to me, one arm behind his back.

"That's because I almost forgot these," he explained, presenting a bouquet of bright yellow and pink gerber daisies.

I was so dumbfounded I just kind of stared until finally managing, "What are these?"

"Flowers," he grinned, reaching out to wrap my fingers around them. He kissed my cheek, clearly thrilled at my surprise. "Let's put them in water real fast, but we kind of have to hurry."

I dumbly followed him back into the house and waited for him to pull a large glass from one of the cabinets, since we weren't exactly a household that stocked vases. He even filled it with water for me. I forced myself to let go, but the flowers looked so beautiful standing in the middle of the table. I definitely hadn't thought I'd be one of those girls that got all teary-eyed over flowers, and it sort of felt absurd that my boyfriend of quite some time brought me a bouquet before our zillionth date, but it just made everything feel so much more . . . special. And after I'd been worried he wasn't even going to show up!

"Where are we going?" I asked, but he just smiled and opened the passenger's door for me and off we set. I couldn't remember seeing Edward this happy, and it kind of threw me for a loop. Hadn't we been fighting the day before? Had that been an awful dream? What had cheered him up so much?

We drove all the way to Port Angeles, and I vaguely wondered if Charlie would find out and, if so, if this was something I'd get in trouble for. I hadn't exactly asked permission to leave the town, though Charlie had known me and Edward had a date. He'd seemed to relax a bit lately as far as curfew and hating Edward went.

"Magic Hands?" I read the neon sign above one store shoved into the middle of a strip mall.

"It's probably not what it sounds like to you," he laughed. He motioned for me to wait in my seat, then jogged to open my door. I'd always felt like it was a sort of silly chivalry, because of all things I was capable of opening my door. But something about Edward radiated this feeling that he was really, really trying for this to be great, and I wasn't about to sabotage that. I wanted it to be great, too.

Inside was much more innocent than what such a name alluded to. Shelves and shelves of painted pottery had me carefully watching my every step as Edward led us past several tables covered in pallets and tubes of paint.

"I'm afraid I'm kind of tricking you," he admitted, grabbing my hand when we'd reached a door at the back. "This is sort of a two-date thing. See, today we make our pottery, and then at least a week from now, we come back to paint it. So, I'm afraid you'll have to agree to another date with me or forever live with unpainted pottery."

"I'm going to be terrible at this," I warned, but everything in my body seemed to be floating towards the ceiling. He'd actually taken me seriously!

We stepped through to a darker room full of a half dozen pottery wheels. There were already several couples milling about while one woman who, judging by the clay already spattered on her face must be the teacher, was encouraging everyone to get smocks on. Edward introduced us, but I was too busy looking around the room to recall what she said her name was.

"Here," Edward offered a smock to me, holding it out so I could slip my hands inside. He thought for a moment, then suggested, "You should probably pull your hair back."

I shrugged, "I don't have a ponytail holder with me."

"That's fine. I stole one from Rosalie." Without asking or anything, he stepped around behind me and, as gently as though my strands might all snap off at the tiniest wrong move from him (could they?), he slowly pulled my hair up into a low ponytail. "Like this?" I laughed and nodded, not really understanding what he had asked. It was difficult to think of anything other than that his fingers were gathering all the loose strands and brushing my neck as he rolled the ponytail around in his hands. I felt some tugging, wasn't quite sure what he was doing, but still smiled up at him all the same when he dropped my ponytail and grinned proudly at me.

It was way too loose, though. As soon as he walked away to get blocks of clay for each of us, I quickly pulled it out and redid it. From what I could tell, he had doubled the ponytail holder beforehand and then tugged my hair through it, rather than pulling my hair through first and then twisting it. The fact that he didn't know how to do something so basic as put up a ponytail made me giggling, and I kissed his arm when he brought the clay over.

I'll spare you the details and just admit that I was terrible and that Edward was expectedly great. If I'd been hoping for another neat little thing I could excel at instead of Edward, that thing was definitely not pottery. Though the instructor explained everything carefully, I still had a difficult time holding my hands still enough to even get a flat surface, much less do the delicate ins and outs required to make the contours of the pottery. Edward crafted his vase like a pro, but insisted, no matter how many times he'd asked, that he'd never done this before. He just naturally could stay still and control his hands. Humans were really not fine-tuned to make pottery, he assured me.

In the end, I managed to make a vase that would hold water, though it was a bit lumpy and lopsided and a bit thick for a normal vase - trying to make the walls any thinner just meant I kept poking my fingers through completely. Edward's was delicate and beautiful. But he still managed to get clay on his forehead and in his hair, and that made me feel much better. There was a particular smudge across his cheek from when he'd rubbed at what he thought was a fly but was actually a small bit of rolled clay I'd tossed at him without his noticing. He was human, after all.

Ha.

"You know, if we get good enough at this, we can handmake everyone's Christmas presents next year," he commented as we carried our "priceless" treasures over to the collection destined for the kiln. "Who's your pot for?"

"I don't know. Someone I hate."

He laughed, "Oh, stop it. They'd actually probably love yours much more than anything I made. I know there's this idea that people love what's perfect, but I think it's the exact opposite. I think people love the imperfections."

"I'm hoping so." I was curious what his response would be, but he said nothing. So I waited. He held the door open for me the leave the shop. It wasn't until we were in the car that I asked, "You don't have a response for that?"

"There is no good response to that, and it's been brought to my attention that sometimes maybe I should just shut up."

That made me laugh and emphatically agree, which led him to tickle me in the ribs. I wasn't all that ticklish, but I pretended to be and pulled away, batting at his hand.

"Well, come on, what were the possible answers?"

He refused at first, but after a bit of coaxing and a pinky promise to not be angry, he offered, "I could say that you're perfect, which you probably wouldn't like anyway, and which would imply I _don't_ love you based on what we just said. I think you sort of tune compliments like that out anyway when I say them . . . Or I could say I love you for your imperfections, which also isn't any good."

"I like it, though," I insisted. "It sounds . . . real."

"Well, let's say maybe that love is a success when you find someone who is aware of your imperfections, but thinks they make you perfect." He said this while backing out, and so flippantly that I almost missed how awesome it actually was. But then it occurred to me that I had heard something very similar.

I laughed, "Have you been talking to Carlisle about us?" The look of horror on his face made me laugh just a little bit harder, but I thought it only fair to put him out of his suffering and assure him, "No, it's fine. It's good, in fact! I think that's probably the best thing to do."

"It's just that Carlisle and Esme have-"

"You don't have to explain it to me, Edward. I've talked to him, too," I reminded. "I think that maybe sometimes it's the best thing for a relationship to get some outside perspective. And I think we'd be fools to not want what Esme and Carlisle have."

"Yeah." He was quiet but seemed happy; everything about him was relaxed as he drove. I let my hand rest in the space between our seats and felt so silly doing it. If I wanted to hold his hand, I could just grab it. We're been together for long enough I'd earned hand holding whenever I wanted it. But I felt that strange shyness well up in me again. I was just about to pull my hand back when he wrapped his fingers around mine and rubbed his thumb along the back of my hand. Such a small gesture, and yet it made that overpowering love well up in me again, the feeling I'd had after the movie the night before, the feeling I'd eaten and breathed for the first six months of our relationship.

No, better than that feeling, because I was aware of the power and danger of that feeling now. That was the feeling that made people do stupid, crazy things. It wasn't the feeling of love, not of lasting love. It was the feeling of right-now love, of infatuation, of intoxication. What mattered was what feeling was there in between the moments of love intoxication. It was easier to be emotionally in love, but the rational love is what kept everything moving, kept everyone together during the hard parts, kept you certain about your choice when your emotions became distracted or overwhelmed or exhausted.

It was an addiction, I've no doubt. Romantics live for those moments, writing poems and fantasizing and chasing one object after another just to get another taste of that euphoria. They consume movies and books just for that one fleeting moment of, "Holy shit, my heart is soaring high as a kite."

But that moment _is_ fleeting, which is good. Things can't always be like they are in the very beginning of a relationship. You'd . . . I think you'd _die_ from it. You'd forget to eat and sleep and, well, at some point you'd fake your own death only to wake up to reality and realize you forgot to clue in the people you love what was going on with you and the object of your affection is dead. And then you realize they died because of their love for you, which is such a dramatic gesture of love that you get that euphoric feeling again, so you'd better do the same for them.

And then everybody is dead. Not vampires, just plain, boring dead.

Euphoric love is great for the books and the movies and the legends, but us real people, we need something more.

* * *

**VI . ii**

Charlie had given a non-committal grunt from beneath the sink when I'd asked if Edward could stay for dinner. I took that to mean he would be thrilled to sit opposite Edward at the dinner table and patted Edward on the shoulder as I slipped past. Despite the smock, dry clay clung to the neckline of my shirt and I didn't want it drifting into the food while I cooked. I took my time changing, partly because I wanted to look nice without it being obvious I'd tried to look nice just for dinner with my dad and partly because I could hear the mumble of voices from the kitchen. That meant Charlie and Edward were talking, and I didn't want to interrupt any bonding that might be going on.

So I brushed my hair and move some things around in a mindless attempt to tidy up. I looked out the window, enjoying the warmth of the sun on my skin as it hit my window just right. I wondered if Jacob ever came by just to check, if he ever even thought about me at all. It made me sad. He still hadn't returned a single one of my calls. One of these days I was going to just have to drive down and make him see me. I hadn't yet because I wanted this to be as painless as possible for him. On second thought, maybe it was better if I stayed away. I just didn't know. I didn't know what was best.

I adjusted my ponytail and had just opened the door when there was a loud 'pop' from downstairs followed by yelling. I rushed down the stairs, nearly landing on my face after tripping down the last three.

Water. Water everywhere. Edward and Charlie were both still yelling as they struggled to turn the water off or cover it or whatever as water continued to shoot out from beneath the sink.

Of course, no one warned me not to go into the kitchen, so I ran in at full speed, right into the spray. I yelped and tried to leap back but there was a considerable amount of water on the floor so I only slipped and landed flat on my ass. Charlie was under the sink fighting the water, but Edward left my dad's aid to come help me up. Only he also slipped in the water and landed nearly on top of me, just barely catching himself with his arms. At my yelp he laughed and kiss me quickly on the lips, then rolled to the side in order to sit up and move in front of my to block me from the water. I guessed the trip had to be faked but it was still amusing.

Finally Charlie got the water shut off and for a moment there was absolute silence except for the drip-drip of water falling from the corners of the table and chairs. Edward and Charlie were soaked through, and I wasn't much better.

"What did you _do_?" I demanded. Edward looked and Charlie and Charlie looked at Edward. I don't know which one start laughing first, but within seconds neither could speak, they were laughing so hard. Edward motioned around to the drenched kitchen while Charlie tried to say something about forgetting something and Edward handing a tool and somehow the water . . . I couldn't really understand.

Charlie offered a hand to help Edward up, and then me. Me second.

Charlie patted Edward on the shoulder as he helped him up and laughed, "Sorry about that, Edward. I promise I didn't plan that."

"I don't know . . . it hit me in the face a bit too perfectly there, Chief Swan."

If I wasn't unhappily soggy and cold, I would have chalked this up to another dream. Charlie didn't like Edward. They didn't laugh together. Edward didn't help Charlie fix the sink.

We all three looked around. Nearly every flat surface was wet. And because Charlie and Edward were wearing shoes, the water on the floor had quickly muddied. There were greasy handprints on the counter. This was going to take some time to clean up.

Charlie scratched the back of his neck and asked, "What do you kids say we just order a pizza and call it a night? I'll clean this up . . . uh . . . later."

So Charlie loaned Edward a t shirt and sweatpants. An hour later, the three of us were eating pizza in front of the tv, talking over an episode of _House_. Edward was actually able to hold his own in baseball conversation with Charlie, which made me wonder when he'd studied up.

When he snuck back into my room later that evening after barfing the pizza up in the woods, he assured me, "It's not really _that_ bad to vomit, and sometimes its worth it."

"Like when?"

"Like when you're trying to impress a girl by impressing her father. Now get some sleep. I'll stay until you fall asleep and then I've got to go read up on fishing."

"What? Why?" I demanded, allowing him to tuck the covers in around me and stretch out beside me.

"Your dad's thinking of asking me to go fishing with him, and I'm thinking of saying yes."

I sighed and rolled my eyes, already envisioning what a disaster that would be. Hadn't I already vetoed the idea to Charlie? But I couldn't tell him no because, honestly, I hadn't realized until tonight how much it meant to me for Charlie and Edward to get along.

"You don't mind not spending another night with me?" I asked, surprised he hadn't asked permission or anything.

He seemed surprised by my question and returned, "Do you want to stay? If you do, I will. I just assumed . . . and the way I see it, you're only seventeen. We've got at least the rest of your life, possibly eternity to spend the night together. A bit of anticipation is fun for now, right? Isn't that what you were trying to tell me earlier? This way, we're more like a normal teenage couple . . . but if you want me to stay, just-"

"I think you're right, Edward," I smiled. "For once." He tickled my ribs again and I laughed and pushed him away, only to curl up against his arm again.

"Good night, Izzy."

I kept my eyes closed but made a vomiting noise.

"Okay," he sighed. "Not Izzy, either. Night, Bella. Sweet, restful dreams."

* * *

_AN: This isn't related to this story, but if you've noticed that Learning to Say No has disappeared from my story list and are curious/upset, read my profile to find out why. :)_


	7. Act VII, Sc i

_AN: This thin__g is already longer than I ever thought it would be. We're getting close. I don't know if at this point it feels like it's breaking downing down into fluff but whatever. Maybe it gets too heavy-handed, but it's tougher than I thought to fix so many of the things that I thought were wrong with Edward and Bella in such a short span of time so that it doesn't interfere with the plot of Eclipse . . . I've got two possible ending points in mind, so I'll see which feels better, the fluffier one or the more open-ended one. Thanks everyone who's stuck with me through the messy past year and a half. I'm now gainfully employed, all four of my family members who got cancer are alive and doing well, and I can almost afford to exist, haha. So I'm back to writing YAY._

* * *

**VII . i**

I'd never quite gotten over my dislike of the rain. I'd been un-enthused when I'd first moved to Forks, but it had taken lying on the forest floor through the long, rainy night that Edward left me to make me really hate precipitation. So when I woke up the next morning to the sound of heavy raindrops hitting the window, I greatly regretted not asking Edward to spend the night. Waking up next to him, lying in bed until late in the morning, only getting out of bed for the promise of coffee, bacon and eggs . . .

But I didn't even know when Edward was coming over. I started to get dressed, decided I didn't want to and instead just put a sweatshirt and socks on. The house always felt so cold when it rained. Downstairs, Charlie was reading the paper and sipping coffee, his feet propped up on the chair I wanted to sit in. I didn't think twice about pushing his feet off after I'd poured my own cup of coffee.

"Bells. Such a ray of sunlight in the morning," he mused. I grumbled incoherently and slurped coffee until I felt a bit better. But only a little because it was still raining outside and my toes were numb, even with socks on. I took Charlie's empty cereal bowl to the sink with me once I'd finished my coffee while he folded up the paper and stretched.

Nine o'clock on a Sunday morning and still no sign of Edward? I pushed down the small fear that something had happened to prevent his coming. When Charlie asked if Edward was coming over, though, I decided I should call.

He answered on the third ring, "Good morning, Bella. How did you sleep?"

"Where are you?" I asked before realizing how rude I sounded. "I slept okay. Good morning to you, too."

"That's good. I'm just at home."

"Aren't you coming over?"

"Do you want me to?" he was ridiculous enough to ask. "We hadn't decided I was coming over. I didn't know if maybe you wanted a day away from me, or maybe you want to come over here?" He sounded so cheerful that at first I thought maybe was mocking me but no, he assured me. He had just missed me and was glad to hear I wanted to see him.

It had been so long since I'd been to the Cullens' that I decided paying a visit to their house would be nice. Edward didn't want me driving in the rain, though, so I agreed to wait for him to pick me up. As the waiting dragged on, I pulled out the book I'd been reading for months now and hadn't quite had the time to finish. When Edward came over and Charlie let him in - Charlie, who didn't mind me going to the Cullens' even though I was still technically grounded - he found me beneath a pile of blankets on the couch, enraptured by the book.

"I hate to ask you to get up," he said, sitting on the couch by my feet. The blanket moved, uncovering my feet, and I hissed, which made him laugh and readjust the blanket to recover my toes. "Do you still want to come over?"

"Yeah," I assured him. "But I want to bring my book because I only have like ten pages left. Also . . ."

"Also what?"

"My toes are really cold. Do you think . . . that maybe . . . you could get me some socks? From the top right drawer of the dresser."

He rolled his eyes but kissed the top of my forehead as he strode past me and up the stairs. He was back almost as soon as he'd left, tossing a tie-dyed pair of socks at me. I made a face but he shrugged; this was my reward for being lazy. Mom had given me these four years ago and the only reason I hadn't thrown them out was because they were so warm.

"All right, but when Alice's eyes bleed, it's your fault," I insisted, slipping them on. Only then was I brave enough to peel the blanket off, toss on my rain jacket and follow him outside, my book clutched within the safety of my jacket.

He made the car painfully warm so that eventually I had to turn the heat down. This inspired a question, so I asked, "How do you feel about heat?"

"It's nice."

"You can feel heat, though, right? You're like a lizard that likes to sun itself?"

"Yes, thank you, Bella. I am just like a lizard."

"I only mean that you can feel the heat, right? But you don't sunburn. How hot does it have to be to hurt you?" He gave me an odd look so I laughed, "I'm not planning anything! I'm just wondering. Fire can burn you but can the sun? What about an oven? Or if you held your hand over a candle?"

"No sunburns. As long as we're in one piece, a candle or an oven wouldn't hurt us. I think walking through a fire would be fine, too, but I've never tried it . . ."

"So if you all walked through a fire, afterwards you'd say 'We made it through in one piece, thank God,' but the thing is, you would mean it _literally!"_ He wasn't as amused as I was by this play on words and spent the next few minutes rolling his eyes so violently I thought he might drive off the road and kill us. I then made him be quiet so I could finish my book before we got there, but we pulled up to the house when I was on the second to last page.

"No, wait, wait," I insisted. "Almost done . . ."

"You can't just sit here to finish. You'll freeze to death."

"Shh . . ."

He had the audacity to ignore my shushing and instead picked me up bodily from the car.

"Let me read!" I insisted, dangling over his shoulder to read behind his back. He made an effort to bounce me as much as humanly possible as he carried me into the house, despite my pouting, "You're ruining the ending of the book!"

He finally stood still, just within the entrance of the house. For several minutes, we remained like that. At one point Jasper walked by but as far as I could tell, he didn't even bat an eyelash our way. I'm sure Alice has done much stranger things than finish a book while slung over his shoulder.

Finally I sighed and announced, shutting the book as loudly as you can shut a soft cover, "Finished."

Edward took that opportunity to yell, "Bella's here!" and then run with me as quickly as possible up to his room - not fast enough to make me puke down his back, but fast enough that the room spun when he tossed me onto the couch in his room.

"Did you like it?"

"Like you sprinting through the house with me slung over your shoulder like a sack of potatoes? Not particularly-"

"No, the book. I've never seen you read like that."

"Like what?"

"All . . . dedicated. I've never seen you _enjoy_ reading."

I laughed, "Well, I used to read all the time. When I was younger, Mom would ground me from reading instead of, like, from TV or anything."

"Why used to?"

I shrugged. It hadn't occurred to me until this moment that I'd ever stopped reading. I tried to remember when or why.

"I guess I stopped when we started dating. Just had too much going on and . . . well, I guess I was less interested in a mental escape because my life was so much like a storybook already. This is the first book I've read for fun probably since then, actually. Since we started dating, I mean."

"What made you decide to read again?" he pressed. He sat on the bed beside me and picked up my deposited book, turning it over in his hands as though the book itself were some answer. He gave me an uncertain smile, "Life less like a storybook now?"

"Not really. It's that . . . for a while, I think I felt like no one in the world could understand what my life was like. No one had ever been in a relationship like mine, so there wasn't anything out there -book, movie, music, anything- that could possibly affect me because what I was dealing with was so much bigger. I thought romance and adventure and mystery were all stupid because they couldn't possibly compare to my life. I think . . ."

He waited a long time for me to answer because Edward is nothing if not patient. I was trying to figure out how to put it into words because I suddenly felt very silly. Here I was spouting off these deep thoughts when Edward had probably thought much deeper, much more significant thoughts, decades ago. This was probably like listening to a five year old talk about their day at school when you knew there was such a bigger world out there for them.

"You think what?" he pressed after a while, stretching out beside me on the couch.

"I think that the details don't matter," I admitted, looking at him so I could try and gauge his response to this idea. "I think that it doesn't matter if it's humans and vampires or boys and boys or girls and girls or boys and girls. Teenagers, adults, old people, even kids. I think we all feel the same things, regardless of the details." His eyebrows raised, but I couldn't tell why. "I think when you read a book and find that some character in the book has felt the exact same thing that you felt, even if the circumstances are entirely different, it reminds you that you're not alone and that you're human and that . . . that you haven't discovered some new emotion or existence. Love, loss, disappointment, jealousy, frustration, hope, defeat, even helplessness; it's all been felt before, and it's been captured in books. You're just a human, like everyone else. And that's good. Thinking you're too special to be human and appreciate the human experiences you see in books just shuts you off from . . . are you laughing at me?"

"No." I frowned at his smile. "No! I'm not. I just didn't know you thought about things like this. You've never talked to me about stuff like this before. I'm glad you are."

"I guess I always felt like you'd just laugh at me, or not take it seriously, or just . . . you can be real condescending sometimes, you know."

The smile disappeared as he kissed me on the forehead, "I know. I'm sorry. I do take you seriously."

"And anyway, what I said applies to you too."

"Does it?"

"This book," I explained, taking it from his hands and holding it in the air over us. "You should read it. It's about a boy who's born with a frozen heart, so the midwife replaces it with a cuckoo clock. She tells him though that he can never fall in love because his heart just isn't strong enough. Love sucks for everyone, but he specifically can never experience it because it'll literally kill him."

"How long does it take for him to fall in love?"

"What makes you think he falls in love?" I pressed.

"Everyone falls in love, don't they?"

"Then what made you think you were so special?"

For the first time in my life, I genuinely felt like I'd gotten the better of Edward. Not in a mean or cruel way. But in a way that meant he'd heard something I'd said and it had genuinely surprised and affected him.

"What do you mean?"

"Don't," I rolled my eyes. "You thought you'd spend eternity alone. You told me that."

"I did think that."

"What changed your mind?"

"You did," he admitted, rolling on his stomach so he could look down at me. "I couldn't imagine that anyone would ever love me or that I'd ever love anyone enough to give up my precious but bitter alone time and be a partner. You made me think that maybe it was worth a try. I kept thinking, I was so certain, that we'd be together for a while and then one of us would get annoyed with the other, or tired of each other, and that would be the end of it."

"You thought that!" I laughed, hitting him playfully on the arm.

He looked horror-stricken, "Should I have not-"

"Keep going," I insisted. "You're not saying anything wrong. In fact, I think you still think that. That's one of the reasons you don't want me to change."

"I thought we would be together for a while and it would just prove me right that it was my destiny to be tragically alone for eternity. I really did care about you from the beginning, don't get me wrong, or I wouldn't have pursued anything. I liked you. I was infatuated with you."

"But when did you _love_ me?"

"I think I accepted that I loved you that first time I spent the night-"

"Well the first one I knew about at the time," I teased.

"That was the first time I was with someone, you, and realized that I wasn't just curious or infatuated or experimenting. I was genuinely happy. I was content lying there beside another person. I thought 'I want this person to be mine. I want it always to be like this'"

"So then what happened?" I sat up because it made me feel in a better frame of mind to understand all of this. I'd wanted to get a peek at these things in his head for so long, and here he was, finally explaining them in a way that hadn't just degenerated into sappy but watery confessions of love. "How did you go from _that_ to . . . suicidal."

He sat up as well, "When James was after you, and I watched you drive off with Alice and Jasper . . . I felt so alone when you were gone. It terrified me that someone could make me feel that way, that I could be so dependent on someone's, particularly a fragile human's, safety. I'd always thought I could relegate losing a partner, if I actually found one, to no more than a splinter. But that experience -it wasn't a splinter. It was an all-consuming void. It was worse than losing my parents or changing or anything I'd ever experienced before."

A sudden lightbulb went off in my head and I gasped. It caught his attention and made him stop. I tried to get him talking again, but he wouldn't until I said what I'd just had such a revelation about.

"That was it," I tried to explain. "That was the moment that changed everything."

"What do you-"

"Edward, that changed _everything!_ That's when you started treating me like I was so breakable because you were so afraid of losing me and being alone! You threatened to leave me after I woke up in the hospital. And I was so afraid of losing you and being alone when you did that, it made me believe I was so breakable too! Then when you left a few months later, well, I broke like we both expected me to. And when you thought I was dead, you broke too."

He clearly didn't like this at all and, making a face, argued, "That's not it at all. I love you and I was terrified of something happening to you because of-"

"I know you do. And I love you. I believe those things. But did you really think that choosing to be alone would make it hurt less if I died? That moment when I went off with Alice and Jasper wasn't about you realizing something about me, it was about you realizing something about _you._ You realized that you're like everyone else on the planet. You don't want to be alone. You want a partner, not just love. You want someone else to share everything with."

"Yeah, you."

"That's fine, and I'm glad, but it's not the same thing, Edward." If I'd never seen Edward look panicked before, I sure did now. His brow was furrowed and his mouth open. My obvious elation wasn't helping matters because it clearly confused him.

"Look, Bella, I don't know how we got to this, and I don't understand what you're clearly so happy about, because it sounds like you're explaining to me that we don't actually love each other, we're just lonely. And if that's how you feel about me-"

"You're panicking. Just stop and think about this."

It was a strange feeling to suddenly be the one explaining something to Edward. I didn't feel larger or more powerful, though. I just suddenly felt like his equal. His partner. It was glorious.

I put my hands on his shoulders to force him to calm down and look at me as I explained, "Neither one of us wants to be alone. We like having someone to kiss and hug and knowing someone cares about us and all of that good stuff. And maybe we were both surprised by that because before we were both so independent. So when our ideas about that changed, we went overboard, because we realized something we thought we knew about ourselves was wrong. Maybe we got so caught up in being boyfriend and girlfriend that we sort of stopped being Edward and Bella. You got so over-protective because you loved having someone that was yours and you didn't want to lose that, even though your over-protectiveness actually led you to throw that away in some weird cycle, which you thought was the best way to protect yourself from the pain of ever losing me."

"And you?"

I'd hoped he wouldn't ask, but I figured it was only fair, so I continued, "And I think maybe I got too carried away thinking about all the stuff that boyfriends and girlfriends can do together -like sex. I got so excited to be a girlfriend to someone like you, I guess I sort of forgot how to be a daughter or a friend or even by myself. I think we both got sort of tunnel-visioned. I mean, you didn't initially ask me all those questions to get to know me because you wanted to lock me up in a glass box, right? Or because you wanted to put yourself in a situation where you broke your own heart and then killed yourself?"

"Of course not."

"Well, and I didn't want to start dating you just to have sex with you. So when was it? When did we stop seeing each other, and just saw the relationship and what we wanted or were scared of in it? When did sex and fear of heartbreak get to be bigger components than just how much we enjoyed talking to each other?"

He didn't have an answer. But he was thinking, and I was thinking. I was proud of us. It felt like we were really onto something here.

"So . . ."

"You panicked when I asked you not to spend the night, right?" He nodded. "And then you stopped assuming that you should spend the night. I kind of panicked when you assumed that you shouldn't just come over in the morning."

"You did?" He smiled though, and I could tell he'd known I would panic. A slightly passive-aggressive streak in him, I guess.

"But it meant more to me when you wanted to see me later. When I talked to you on the phone and you sounded perfectly fine after spending time alone, it felt like you just wanted to be with me, not that your life depended on it. We used to think we had two options, right? We both did. We had each other or . . . or death. We thought we'd die without each other."

"I still think that."

"Of course you do. Because we all inherently think no one has ever understood love the way we experience it and that we alone will actually die from heartache. Trust me, if it was possible, I think we both would have by now. But other people love just as hard as we do. And people lose the ones they love and they survive it and sometimes they even meet other people they love differently but just as much. Your options aren't me or an eternity alone. You have dozens of options, most of which you just can't see at any given time. It's more meaningful, and it's less scary pressure, if you _realize_ that and still _choose_ me."

"You mean that you honestly think I could be just as happy with someone else-"

"Maybe I don't believe in soul mates anymore," I shrugged. "Maybe there's not just one person for everyone, there are a dozen, and each one would give you a very different life and a very different but equal happiness. And you pick the one you want and you commit to that every day, with appreciation and conviction that you chose right for yourself. Maybe star-crossed lovers are just people who chose for themselves rather than going with the flow and picking the easiest option."

I didn't know if I was even making sense, but I felt like I'd caught onto an idea and, since I had Edward's attention, I didn't want to stop until I felt like he was standing right where I was standing.

I continued, "Isn't that a better idea than that some unseen hand pairs people up before they're born and you either find them and make it work and hope nothing ever happens to them, or that's it? We've always believed we're fated to be together. But I don't want fate to choose me for you. I want _you_ to choose me for you, and vice verse. I want you to choose me because, regardless of how long or short, bumpy or smooth a time we have together, it makes you happy, not because you think you'd die without me or you think without me you'll be alone for eternity."

"You do make me happy."

"But at the end of the day, you still think it's me or a lifetime of despair. And you spend so much energy trying to find a way to avoid the despair of not having me, that you forget to be happy _with_ me." I paused, but he didn't say anything. "I thought Romeo was so romantic because he chose to die with Juliet. But he wasn't choosing to spend a lifetime with her. He wasn't choosing her every morning when he woke up. He was choosing to die with her because he didn't want to be alone and couldn't imagine he would ever love again."

"He didn't want to live without her."

"He was going to live without her either way," I pointed out. "She was dead. They could choose death at the same time or life apart. I don't know that it's really romantic after all. They just chose "not life apart," so death it was. They didn't have the option of life together, and they didn't think they had the option of life with another person that would also make them happy. The great thing is that we do have the choice. And we get to keep making that choice every day."

"If you're wanting to turn into a vampire, you do have to make that choice," he argued. "Choosing me and having me change you would literally result in your death."

"No, Edward, I don't." I grabbed his face in my hand because I wanted him to understand me, and I knew there was a high risk here that he wouldn't. "I want to be changed so that we don't have to make that choice. As long as I'm human, you'll someday have to make the same decision Romeo did, and I never want you to have to do that. If we aren't going to be together forever, I want it to be because we decided that, not because mortality decided for us. Humans will always have to face what Romeo did. But once I'm changed, we don't have to spend eternity together just because of that. You can be married and have twelve kids and your finances are all mixed and you've abandoned your family for a guy, and those still aren't good enough reasons to stay with someone. Do you really look at Carlisle and Esme together and think the only reason they're together is because she's a vampire now?"

"You don't think before condemning yourself to a life as a vampire that you should be sure about me?"

"I don't think I'll ever regret it or change my mind. And you have to believe me when I say that. But what I'm saying is that, when I'm a vampire, if the only reason you're with me is because I'm a vampire, that's not right. You can't think of it like that. Every morning when you wake up, you should think to yourself 'why am I with Bella? Do I still want to be with Bella?' If you won't ask yourself that question, it's because you're scared of the answer."

"I just don't think you should have to constantly ask yourself-"

"Then you're taking something for granted. Then the only reason you're with me is because you feel like you're too far gone so you haven't got a choice anymore, it's me or nothing, me or loneliness, me or guilt. Would you want me to stay with you just because I was worried you'd kill yourself if I broke up with you?"

He thought about this and admitted, "Sometimes, selfishly I would say yes. The selfish part of me wants you regardless of the cost. The rest of me wants you to be happy and safe, regardless of what that means for me."

"So do you want me to say that I love you and am with you because a year ago life threw us together and now it's either be together or get killed by the Volturi? Or do you want me to say that I love you because every morning I choose you and I want to be a vampire so that we have as many sunrises together as we want? So that the day will never come when we don't get to choose each other anymore?"

"The second one."

"Uh huh," I laughed, rolling in closer to him. "Me too. So believe me when I say it. Trust me."

"So what you're saying is that I should really read this book," he joked, picking it up from where I'd tossed it to the side. His subject change didn't annoy me in the slightest, though. Partially because I felt like we were connected on a level that we hadn't been in a long, long time. And partly because he was looking at me with a sense of something like awe. He didn't look at me like he loved me or worried about me or was dependent on me. He looked at me like he respected me.

You're trying to build a house out of bricks and clay and it's just not working. No matter how you stack the supplies, it just doesn't stay put. The slightest breeze topples the wall and sometimes it crumbles just on its own. And then you realize that it's because you're an idiot and you forgot a really, really important part -to get the clay a little wet so it'll hold the bricks together as it dries.

Ever since I'd met Edward, I'd been so worried about whether he loved me and whether I deserved him and whether I could make him happy . . . I'd forgotten to make sure he respected me. I'd been pissed at the consequences -lectures, scolding, condescending tones, possessiveness- without realizing what was actually wrong.

"Thank you," I smiled.

"For what?"

"For taking me seriously."

"I've been alive eighty-six years longer than you have," he laughed, "and you still manage to teach me things, even about myself. You're a smart, beautiful woman, Bella, and getting smarter all the time. And I'm grateful for every day that you choose me."

That deserved a kiss, no questions asked. This all really did remind me of back to the beginning, when we were so interested in getting to know each other, when every day was a new discovery. We'd been eager to get to know everything because we just knew we were going to spend our lives together. I'd been raised to believe that the goal was to find someone to spend your life with. But really, that was just the result of finding someone you wanted to spend every day with. If every day you reminded yourself why you were with the person you were with, you'd never look back and regret it.

"How about you go find a new book to read in the library, and I'll go make you some tea and meet you in there." He kissed me on the forehead and stood, taking the book I'd finished with him.

"Okay, but get some blankets, too."

"I bought an electric one," he grinned. "I won't have to sit so far away for you to be warm."

"Perfect!"

I wish I could say this moment of enlightenment, these discoveries we'd made, changed our lives and fixed everything. It was a solid foundation for fixing everything but come on, I was eighteen and he was equally as young when it came to relationships. I'd had a moment of insight but wasn't even, to be honest, certain what I"d said. So yes, we had some food for thought but no, everything wasn't fixed, and this isn't quite the end. I mean, my Romeo and Juliet paper was in total crisis mode now with less than a month until it was due. But we're getting there.

* * *

_AN: The book I mention in here is "The Boy With the Cuckoo Clock Heart" by Mathias Malzieu and I love it and highly recommend it. Next chapter is ALSO act 7, so it's okay if you only feel half settled with this act, because there's another scene still at the Cullens up next. _


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